Clint Eastwood is 78 years old. According to the Internet Movie Database he has acted in 66 projects and directed 33, including the one he is working on right now. What’s astonishing is not that Eastwood’s career has been running for 53 years, but that, with the exception of pink Cadillacs, painted wagons and 500 pound gorillas, it has been one of Hollywood’s most consistent, successful, and iconic careers.
As an actor Eastwood has always been able to juggle that line between being a star and being a performer. As a director he has evolved from a man trying to give his audience what they want to one of America’s last remaining greats - alongside Scorsese and Lumet. Clint Eastwood makes Andy Warhol’s fifteen minutes of fame seem redundant at best.
Eastwood's Final Performance?
That said, after Gran Torino, Clint Eastwood, as he has said he won’t, never needs to act again. If he died tomorrow, he would leave having made the most powerful farewell that any artist could possibly hope to make.
Like Robert Altman’s A Prairie Home Companion, Gran Torino is a document of a man coming to grips with everything that his past has offered him, and leaving it behind without regret, knowing that he wouldn’t have changed a thing. Dirty Harry was criticized upon its release for its possible message of anarchy. In a way, Gran Torino, playing almost like a sequel, is not an apology, but a justification. It’s as much a summation of Clint Eastwood’s career as the character study that some critics have made it out to be.
The Story of Gran Torino
Eastwood plays Walt, a grumpy old Korean War vet. Walt knows only one way: his way. He displays the American flag proudly on his front porch, is baffled by his spoiled, disrespectful grandchildren, has next to nothing to do with his family, who just as soon prefer it that way, guzzles beer on his porch, shotgun not far from reach in case someone harmlessly glides across his lawn, and is disgusted that he is one of the few Caucasians in a neighborhood that has become overrun by black and Asian gangs. Even worse, on the day of his wife’s funeral, an Asian family moves in next door.
At first, Walt can’t stand the neighbors, is ignorant to their practices, throws racial slurs in their direction and orders them off his lawn at gunpoint. It doesn’t help matters when their youngest son, Thao is caught by Walt trying to reluctantly steal his prize Gran Torino as initiation into his cousin’s gang.
However, after saving both Thao and his sister Sue from possible gang trouble, Walt unwillingly becomes a neighborhood hero. Eventually relenting, Walt becomes a father figure to the quiet, inverted Thao, teaching him to be a man, and protecting him against his violent cousin. Soon Walt is more a part of this community than he is his own family.
Life and Death
Gran Torino, by its definition, is not classic Eastwood in league with, say, Mystic River, Unforgiven or Million Dollar Baby are: it maybe spends a bit too much time getting laughs out of the classic Eastwood tough-guy persona, but it is still vintage Eastwood all the same. As is the case with almost all of Eatwood’s recent dramatic achievements, it begins in what appears to be predictable genre territory and opens up into a powerful character study by showing a conflicted man who is forced into making a crucial decision between life or death.
Life and death has been at the heart of Eastwood’s most recent work and Gran Torino is no exception. It has all the elements in place to be no more than a standard Eastwood entertainment, a break from all that heavy dramatic stuff, and for a moment, looks like it may be headed in that direction.
Conclusion
However, Eastwood has grown introspective with age and knowing that a film can be more than entertainment value, gradually reveals Gran Torino as an affecting human drama about a man who needs to choose between dying alone, fixed within an unshakable belief system or coming to grips with himself and at long last, leaving something meaningful behind.
This leads to a final scene which is both shocking and breathtaking in its emotional truth, not just because the viewers have become emotionally entangled in Walt’s journey to that moment, but because it is finally understood, after all these years, what a powerful thing Clint Eastwood’s career has grown into. Walt may as well have been Eastwood himself, and that fateful decision may as well have been making Gran Torino. May Clint Eastwood’s acting career rest in peace.
Rating: 4.5 out of 5
After Thought
Gran Torino was in limited release for four weeks before opening wide across North America on its fifth. Amazingly, it topped the box office, beating out the week’s expected big money maker Bride Wars, a comedic exercise in mediocrity where two hot stars phone their way in to a nice paycheck. This is not only evidence of the continued significance of Clint Eastwood’s career, but provides a certain hope in knowing that, despite all the advances in technology, and star gazing, people, above all, still want to see strong, moving stories about interesting characters and not just how many things can go boom in the shortest amount of time.
