2) Gran Torino
Gran Torino I’m more brazenly negative about. It’s worth saying I really liked Clint Eastwood up until this point. He was on a hot streak from 2003 to 2006, with four stellar movies coming out in that four-year span. Possibly the hottest streak of any director working at the time. Then in October of 2008 there was the release of Changeling, which was met with more mixed response but many, including myself, found it to be on par with his previous efforts, an excellent and heartfelt film.
So maybe I was too excited to see Gran Torino just two months later in December, given that it was another directorial effort by Eastwood but also featured him in the starring role with a shotgun. Hell yes. Then I saw it and I was like hell no, sorry. I don’t like to dismiss a movie for its acting and so that wasn’t my biggest problem with this one. But it was certainly an obstacle that made its enjoyment harder to come by.
I dig that he wanted to cast Hmong actors in Hmong roles, but the inexperience of these performers was painfully obvious and a major distraction, for me at least. But that wasn’t my biggest issue. It was the classic “mean SOB is actually a good guy” trope that irked me the most. It’s not so much that this is a cliché, as that it’s a cliché that is executed so poorly so often, including here.
I get that he’s supposed to be a racist old man, and we’re supposed to find him amusing but kind of reprehensible for what he says and does, until the end when he redeems himself and all is well. This would have perhaps been tolerable if not for the immensely heavy-handed Christ-like imagery they used to turn Walt Kowalski into a savior. They could have made him complicated and interesting, but this was a copout and possibly really offensive and goddammit I hate this movie! Not actually, but when people, including a vast majority of critics and review boards, cite it as a great movie, I can’t abide by that. It makes no sense.
