ViewGuide

Created Dec 29, 2008 11:35PM PST • Edited Apr 18, 2014 12:25AM PST

1. Quality

2. Summary

   Perfect 5.0

   Masterpiece. As terrific a Clint Eastwood movie as has ever been, Gran Torino delivers everything a perfect movie should: it’s funny as hell, deeply engaging, warmly affecting, sad yet uplifting. Movies come fancier, bigger, louder, pricier, and with higher reality factors, but they don’t come any better than this.

   A successful director for almost forty years now (Play Misty For Me got him started in 1971), we’ve only thunk of Clint as more filmmaker than movie star during the past decade. Reviewing Changeling recently, I asked how often someone rises to the apex in two disciplines within one rarefied endeavor? Gran Torino reminds us of Clint’s peaks: why he came to personify the man of action, and has long been a top director.

   The movie wears its ambitions on its sleeve by naming Clint’s character “Walt Kowalski,” the last name shared with A Streetcar Named Desire’s Stanley, legendarily personified by the young Marlon Brando. So here in Gran Torino we have a rookie screenwriter who names his own emotionally inchoate brute “Kowalski,” then gets a Brando-sized legend to play the part. Ballsy, and it worked.

   Speaking of naming, while I recall Gran Torinos as second rate pony cars, the name sure is satiny and sophisticated.

4. Acting

   Great 4.0

   Classic Clint: growling, gritty and ultimately gracious. For this movie lover as for most, a newly minted classic performance from the old lion is cause for thanksgiving. Has anyone ever played the reluctant killer better? Or used that reputation to greater effect in showing the wages of murderous sin? It was amazing enough watching him do it in Unforgiven. Now he’s done it again.

   The Hmong costars were fine in their roles, amazingly enough since all but one are amateurs. The grandma was notably impressive, especially in her ability to spit a torrent of tobacco juice, so I gave her a 4.0 Great in the Female Costar rating.

5. Male Stars Perfect 5.0

6. Female Stars Very Good 3.5

7. Female Costars Great 4.0

8. Male Costars Very Good 3.5

10. Film

    Perfect 5.0

    Gran Torino does to modern revenge dramas what Unforgiven did to Westerns: use their hoary old conventions to subvert the genre. This movie speaks to changes in America (cities degrade, new immigrant groups struggle to establish themselves), changes in generations (an emotionally remote grandfather begets emotionally besotted offspring), and to the healing power of human connection.

    As with Unforgiven, Clint plays an aged warrior troubled by the killing he did as a young man. Here that setup leads him to make peace with his racial demons, his paternal demons, and his automotive obsession. It’s a hat trick.

11. Direction Perfect 5.0

    Director Eastwood brilliantly juxtaposes two confession scenes late in the movie. In the first, we see Clint Kowalski through the confessional screen separating him from his priest, who soon realizes the confession is incomplete. Moments later, we see Kowalski through the screen door separating him from his teenage charge, to whom he delivers his most sacred confession. Wonderful film making, this.

12. Play Perfect 5.0

    Nick Schenk, the rookie screenwriter from Minneapolis, deserves an Oscar nomination for his sublime screenplay. Word is Clint wouldn’t let him change a single word. Excellent call since it’s perfect as is. So what we have here is a cherry wordsmith with an ancient movie star director. This ain’t May-December. It’s January-December.

    All bases get covered: situations deftly set up, advanced, then resolved. Nothing is happenstance; it’s a precise script. Insightful without being overbearing, it’s as much as anything LOL funny. In particular, the barber shop and job interview scenes are priceless.

13. Music Great 4.0

14. Visuals Perfect 5.0

    Nothing fancy, but nothing out of place. Everything had a purpose, plus the car is bitchin cool.

15. Content

16. Edge

    Risqué 1.9

    Spectacularly salty language: Racist invective has rarely been so smoothly delivered, nor so frequently funny. Every protected group gets skewered.

    Violence-wise, there’s a climactic gun battle, and the movie shows the aftermath of a brutal rape, which I’m accounting for by raising both the Sex and Violence ratings, since rape is violence delivered through sex.

17. Sex Titillating 1.7

18. Violence Fierce 2.0

19. Rudeness Salty 2.0

21. Reality

    Natural 1.0

    My own dream car was stolen out of my driveway two days before I saw Gran Torino. So I’m relating to old Walt Kowalski, except I’d argue that my Infiniti M45 Sport was even sweeter than his Ford pony car. The movie thief is a kid trying to resist the lure of the streets. My thieves already live on the streets, so I’ve got like zero hope of getting any solace out of this. Happy endings like that only happen in the movies.

    Given this, I thought it would be fitting for me to post a picture of an M45 instead of a Gran Torino in the WikChip. Mine was a shade darker than the one pictured, with the same tan interior. It was a rocking ride.

22. Circumstantial Natural 1.0

23. Biological Natural 1.0

24. Physical Natural 1.0