Review: Gran Torino

Review: Gran Torino

Rating: ***

Nonna's Rating: $$$

Rotten Tomatoes: 77%

Clint Eastwood's latest offering, a meditation on racism, is as startling as it is familiar. As one critic pointed out, this film answers the Dirty Harry corpus in the same way Unforgiven answered Outlaw Josey Wales.

In this movie, Eastwood introduces us to Walt Kowalski, a racist, unhappy, unhealthy resident of a changing Detroit neighborhood. Like Dirty Harry, he seems ready to pull out a gun and be a vigilante in order to preserve his values -- and a way of life that has died with his wife. But the film soon departs from the old worn formula. Walt allows himself to see his Hmong neighbors as human beings. He transforms himself, not into Dirty Harry, but into the Good Samaritan, recognizing that all who are oppressed are his neighbors.

Gran Torino is the kind of film you see with thoughtful friends and then you go out to dinner with them and talk about it for two hours. It's the kind of film that has disturbing images that haunt you for a few days -- prompting you to question and reassess your own values.

Nonna's Ratings:

$$$$ = Worth paying the Friday evening price
$$$= Worth paying the Matinee price
$$= Worth a rental
$ = Wait for cable
# = Skip it