Gran Torino

Gran Torino is completely engaging if you are the kind of person who used to be (or, used to seem to be, at least) typical; that is, you understand that people say things without having completely thought through their implications and so are not nearly as bad as your harshest instincts would lead you to believe.

Here's what I mean: some people use ethnic slurs, profanity and vulgarity as ways to express their feelings and fears about the world as opposed to their profound beliefs. Those words are shorthand. They can be a hurtful shorthand, to be sure, but for many people, shorthand is all they are.

That's what's going on, for the most part, with Clint Eastwood's character, Walt Kowalski, in Gran Torino. He's an old guy now, from the generation that fought in Korea, he's spent most of his life around people who are like himself, and his neighborhood is changing in the same way that most of America is changing: different cultures are now appearing side by side--still siloed, but now so close that they cannot be ignored. He doesn't object to the qualities of these cultures much; what he really hates is that his own is getting harder to find, getting squeezed out. We know that he's not hateful at his core, not opposed to other cultures, because of how the movie plays out--but that's a pleasure you should gain from watching the movie, and it shouldn't be spoiled by reading in advance what I have to say about it.

Anyway, my point is that ostensibly bigoted Walt Kowalski isn't a bad guy or even particularly bigoted. He's just a typical person in changing times, and change is often difficult to adjust to. And the point of the picture is that people do adjust, sometimes heroically so.

Entertaining, funny picture. Worth seeing.