Clint Eastwood’s branch into direction sent him in a different direction from his action Western movie days and he always takes on different subjects that retain interest, and arguably won him a wider audience than his acting.
This movie is also a little different. He shines a spotlight on the Hmong community of Chinese immigrants and what it is to live harmoniously with them.
He plays a gruff old man living alond in a Michigan neighbourhood that is becoming a lot more diverse – in fact, to the point where he is the only white man in the neighnourhood. He is Walt Kowalski, a Polish American who worked and retired from a Ford Assembly plant (this is Michigan, after all). He is also a Korean war veteran, still brutalized by the memories of the everyday horrors and cruelty of war.
He is fearless, has a good workshop in his garage (car assembly association) and guns (war association). The story opens with his wife’s funeral, where he is what he is – gruff and disapproving of everything : his family, whom he considers spoilt, his grand daughter who dresses inappropriately, his entire family which seems to consider this a picnic and does not show due respect to his wife, and even the young priest ‘who is barely out of his diapers’ who is too young to even appreciate the gravity of death.
Interesting characters – before I go on with the story, a few observations. The priest seems to be a very interesting character – Father Janovich, who seems to bear the casual insults in all their conversation with total aplomb. Clint himself goes around the whole movie bitching and grunting – maybe it is his character but to a viewer it seems that he is constantly grumbly. I understand that he is a no nonsense old man – he even shows flashes of humour with his long time barber and friend – but his muttering under his breath sometimes seems to be a bit too much.
The other thing I noticed is that, given all the weighty subjects he has handled as a director, this is fairly lightweight. It is a growing relationship between Mark and his neighbourhood Hmong boy Thao. He meets him first while pointing his gun at Thao when he finds Thao trying to steal his grand and much loved posession, his Grand Torino (car) kept like new with loving care.
He lets him go and then slowly becomes close to Thao and his sister Sue.
The scenes are well crafted and we understand the difficulties faced by the Hmong group with some cousins joining the local gang and trying to recruit Thao into it – in fact the criteria of admission was to steal Mark’s car, in which Thao failed.
When Mark, purely selfishly, drives the gang making a noise on his lawn – his property – he inadvertantly saves Thao from being bullied by the gang and the Hmongs are grateful.
There are funny scenes where he tries to communicate with the grandmother who does not speak a lick of English and where he is forcibly invited for a dinner party where he does not know how to socialize. They are all also realistic.
The Hmongs send Thao to a kind of penance for trying to steal his car, and Thao is inducted into repairing the house of an old lady living across the street, where Mark teaches him skills of repair. Mark also teaches him how to woo a pretty girl who he knows is interested in Thao and also teaches him ‘how to talk like a man to roughened and toughened men in the neighbourhood’. All these are natural and funny.
When the gang tries to interfere again, the ‘tough guy’ Mark goes to their house to warn them off, with unexpected and disastrous consequences.
Slowly he also gets close to the priest and “somewhat” close to his religion – even going so far to make a confession.
The story has some vibes of a rough man having a sweet interior – Things that we have seen many times, for example in The Despicable Me or Up. (Yes, I know that they are animated movies).
When the family next door faces retaliation where Thao is injured by a gunshot and that Sue is brutalized, he realizes that the time has come for him to set things right. He executes a perfectly planned solution.
The ending is really unexpected and we realize that he prepares for it with a good haircut and the above mentioned confession.
An excellent ending – a nice movie to watch.
7/10
= = Krishna
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