Gran Tourino

Gran Tourino made me smile almost throughout its running time. It is a timely and brilliant character study, cheesy and exaggerated when examined from a distance, but, when it has the time to contextualise itself and draw you in, quite capable of gripping you, moving you and making you fully believe in its melodrama.

The protagonist, Walt, is a relic of old America in a run-down neighbourhood. He sits drinking on his porch, keeping the Stars and Stripes flying and his garden in good order. He fought in Korea and will never forget the experience of war. He keeps his guns readily to hand and regards anyone who wouldn’t belong in the suburbs in the 50s with suspicion. He’s a racist, a judgemental old man whose grossly bourgeois family only antagonises him. And a great, great character. The forthright, outspoken old man with the grizzled voice, foul mouth and utter indifference to what everyone else thinks demands respect and admiration and finally, through more and more glimpses into his ideas of justice and encroaching weakness, becomes increasingly sympathetic, and by the end of the film, undoubtedly heroic.

His interactions with a family that at first it seems he will never accept, his lessons in what it is to be a man in America, and especially his defiance in the face of a world that has changed beyond anything he recognises, is just a great joy to watch. He doesn’t back down for gang members, rapists or threats of murder. This is a film that belongs only in America, only at a time when an older generation and their ideas of masculinity are dwindling, and yet characters like Greg House and the tough guys of recent noir-esque comics adaptations remain as iconic anti-heroes. The scale is small and yet the concepts are far-reaching. And for Clint Eastwood, this performance, this choice of script, this directorial swansong punctuate the end of a remarkable career far more adequately and maturely than a rehash of an old classic, an overblown epic or a descent into banality ever could have done. An excellent film.