Gran Torino

        Gran Torino is a 2008 film from director/actor Clint Eastwood who plays the main character of Walt Kowalski. Set and filmed in Detroit, MI, this is one of my favorites from my hometown. 

     Now, I've reviewed this film before but that was for a different website that doesn't exist anymore and I reserve the right to give it to you fresh. 

     Walt lives in Detroit and just lost his wife. He's lived in the same house since he was married and worked in the local Ford plant. He raised his two boys that are adults now and have children of their own. He's retired now and mostly spends his days tending to his house and lawn and washing and polishing his prized 1972 Gran Torino, the steering column was installed by him at his job at the Ford plant. 

     Thirty or forty years will change a city, even a city as old-fashioned and traditional as Detroit. In that time, Detroit has gotten broken down, many neighborhoods aren't as nice as they were in say 1952. Not that it bothers Walt much, a Korean War veteran, who still keeps his rifle loaded and ready to go whenever the need presents itself.

    Walt's neighborhood has had a lot of Hmong people(rural folk from Laos, Vietnam, and China) move into the neighborhood. At first, he's pretty disdainful of his neighbors and criticizes how they take care of their lawns. But after a while, he gets to be on a friendly neighborly relationship with his immediate neighbors next door. Even though he catches their teenage boy Thao try to steal his car in the middle of the night. And some other local Hmong gang boys try to start a fight with his Hmong neighbors on Walt's front lawn and Walt has to pull his loaded military issue rifle on the gang boys to calm things down and scare them off.

   In order to bring honor back to his family, Thao is tasked with helping Walt around his house. Walt isn't pleased at first but eventually warms to the idea and starts Thao helping to improve little things around the neighborhood like replacing shutters, removing wasps nests, digging out old ugly wood stumps. Thao eventually gains Walt's respect and helps him move an old freezer and Walt makes him a gift of the freezer since the family's freezer recently broke. Walt also helps fix the neighbor's kitchen faucet. Walt helps Thao get a job at his friend's construction site. 

    But the Hmong gang doesn't like Thao working at construction. They harass him coming home from his construction job and rough him up and break his tools. Walt suddenly realizes that they are never gonna leave the family alone. The gang even kidnaps the sister and abuse her and beat her up and shoot up the house. Walt goes out a buys himself a fitted suit. Thao comes over to Walt's house and wants to take revenge on the gang that gave him so much trouble. But Walt tricks him and locks him in the basement. Walt takes his gun upstairs and leaves. He goes to the Hmong gang house and just stands outside in the middle of the street with his jacket on. The Hmong gang come out with their guns and wait for Walt to make a move. Walt reaches inside his jacket for something and the gang shoots him down with automatic weapons.  When Thao arrives to the gang house with the police outside, Walt is dead and the Hmong gang is in handcuffs in the police cars. Walt never had a gun on him.  The movie ends as it began, but with Walt's funeral instead of his wife's. The will is read and he gives his prized Gran Torino to Thao, the kid who tried to steal it. 

    I was never really interested in Clint Eastwood movies until Gran Torino. But I'm currently trying his old westerns and Dirty Harry films.  

    The movie ends with Thao and Walt's dog Daisy driving along the beautiful Lakeshore Drive heading out of one of the worst parts of Detroit along Lake St. Clair into the very posh neighborhood of Grosse Pointe Shores.