IMDb #141 Review: Gran Torino (2008)

Source: Wikipedia

Clint Eastwood, racist old Korean War vet, glares at Asian kids till the racism bleeds out of him through kindness and incurable blood-coughing disease.

This nasty attitude has roots in a nasty place. His sweet wife dies. His house spontaneously becomes the epicenter of a Hmong slum. His main visitor is a young Catholic priest who doles out the recommended dosage of religious guilt-tripping. He's dying of a slow, painful, unspecified disease. His sycophantic family wants for him to keel over so they can divvy up his stuff.

And, while the old man's still alive and kicking, he catches some kid in his garage messing with his mint-condition 1972 Gran Torino fastback.

His omni-directional snarl (and shotgun) happen to drive gangsters off his lawn. He's baffled when the neighbors respond with gratitude. Even the inept carjacker's cool big sis. She speaks enough English to embody a convincing argument that yellow people are just people.

The ethnic food offerings exemplify the foot-in-the-door phenomenon -- allow someone a small thing, and it can easily work up to a big thing. Thus, gluttony works to reverse a lifetime of prejudice.

In time, the ethnic neighbors reluctantly adopt Clint as a rabid racist attack-dog. The old coot adopts their quiet teenage boy as his landscaper, and eventually surrogate son. It's an inspiring transformation, not that our designated hero ever stops oozing raspy offensiveness wherever he slithers.

All this sappiness does little to allay the neighborhood gangster problem. Or the geezer's vague terminal disease, but that's less pressing. As events barrel toward a satisfactory conclusion, the rules of storytelling demonstrate that it's never too late for redemption. So long as you're the designated hero.

If you're elderly or Hmong or incorrigibly racist, come one! Come all! Come see your minority portrayed in a rare sympathetic light, which only mostly doesn't end in torrential submachine gun fire.

116 minutes.