Gran Torino
GRAN TORINO is a sleek, muscle car of a movie Made in the U.S.A., in that industrial graveyard called Detroit. I’m not sure how Clint Eastwood does it, but I don’t want him to stop. Not because every film is great – though, damn, many are – but because even the misfires show an urgent engagement with the tougher, messier, bigger questions of American life.
Dirty Harry is back, in a way, in GRAN TORINO, not as a character but as a ghostly presence. He hovers in the film, in its themes and highcaliber imagery, and of course most obviously in Mr. Eastwood’s face. It is a monumental face now, so puckered and pleated that it no longer looks merely weathered, as it has for decades, but seems closer to petrified wood. Words like flinty and steely come to mind, adjectives that Mr. Eastwood, in his performance as Walt Kowalski, expressively embodies with his usual lack of fuss and a number of growls. A former auto worker at Ford, Walt has just put his longtime wife in the ground when the story opens. From his scowl, it looks as if he would like to join her. (Manohla Dargis)
- Clint Eastwood - Walt Kowalski
- Bee Vang - Thao Vang Lor
- Ahney Her - Sue Lor
- Christopher Carley - Pater Janovich
- Brian Haley - Mitch Kowalski
- Nick Schenk based on a story by Dave Johannson
- Tom Stern
- Joel Cox
- Gary D. Roach
- Kyle Eastwood
- Michael Stevens
- James J. Murakami
- Deborah Hopper
Warner Bros.
