Director: Clint Eastwood
I try not to hear anything about films I intend to see - I'll usually read a review when the film comes out, but other than that, I steer clear of other information. My initial impression was that Gran Torino was Get Off My Lawn: The Movie, a tale about a beleaguered elderly man whose neighborhood is changing all around him. This is partly true, but it's incredibly reductive.
Note: Spoilers Ahead
I want to dislike this movie very much, but Eastwood's performance drives the film. He manages to play an old man as neither doddering nor completely with it, as both inflexible and willing to change, and both callous and sensitive. This kind of performance is needed because the rest of the film is filled with archetypes. Eastwood himself is an archetype - again, he's playing a widowed man as he did in Unforgiven (and as he might have in Million Dollar Baby, I can't recall), and there's some Dirty Harry in his bearing, but he pulls off a unique performance.
I'm not a huge fan of Eastwood's work - there's something incredibly Hollywood about all of the characters in this film, much as there was in Million Dollar Baby. There's also a neatly divided line between good and evil. Still, there's something to be said for a good movie that's not trying to be subtle and that's not about some repressed manchild. Eastwood will be missed when he retires.
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