Clint Eastwood's Gran Torino

[NoRemorse]

This movie brought joy to my heart. My wife accuses me of being an old man. I looked at her like I was struck, "But honey, we don't know any other way to be!".

I can't call this a comedy, Clint just kept it raw and it came out funny like a lot of moments in life. I think someone sprayed some perfume or some ragweed was in the theater cause my allergies started near the end.

All in all I'd call this a great swan song for Clint Eastwood.

[mgkusmc]

My arsenal is as follows,
M1 Garand (42 Dated)
M1903 (dated 1906 from Rock Island)
M1917
2 Colt 1911s (ww2 dated)
Sten MkIII
1853 Enfield Rifle
1877 Springfield Trapdoor Carbine
MWBL99 Water Balloon Launcher

[SgtThrasher]

I have a WWII era M1 Garand I bought from the CMP.
She shoots better than I do.
I also got a Springfield '03 from the CMP.
A M1A standard that I usually set up as a pseudo DMR and a Colt AR finishes my tiny arsenal.

Now that I know Clint uses a Garand I must see movie.

I used the MI Garand @ITR and had a fondness for the history of the 30-06 .I also bought a MI from the CMP and their MI'S are good quality and haven't been piece milled ,but have been in a US armory.There was a little red tape required buying the Garand,but worthwhile if you want a
piece of history.The M14 (308) is a beautiful rifle as well,far better than that M16 (jammer) we used in Nam.

[thedrifter]

Gran Torino

By Lloyd Billingsley
FrontPageMagazine.com | 1/14/2009

Long before Gran Torino, which may be his swan song, Clint Eastwood played San Francisco detective Harry Callahan in Dirty Harry. That 1971 film disturbed the left because it talked back to them.


For the left, rats are comrades, as Orwell put it in Animal Farm. In the vision of Dirty Harry, the rights of innocent victims are more important than the rights of criminals. Callahan tells the mayor that the assassin terrorizing San Francisco will kill again, “because he likes it,” not because he had a rough childhood, can’t find a job, uses drugs, and so on. And when Callahan’s new partner says he studied sociology at San Jose State, the detective responds sarcastically with, “Sociology? Oh, you’ll go far.” Jump ahead 37 years to Gran Torino, and there is definitely sociology going on, along with some historical lapses and politically correct stereotypes straight from Hollywood central casting.


Eastwood, now 78, plays Walt Kowalski, a veteran of the Korean War, 1950-1953, not exactly fresh in the minds of most filmgoers. The film doesn’t tell them that it started when North Korea’s Communist dictator Kim Il Sung, backed by Stalin, invaded South Korea, a U.S. ally, not the other way around, as I.F. Stone had it. The film offers no flashbacks to the conflict or any meaningful exposition. Here the Korean war comes across, through Walt, as white America versus “zipperheads,” “chinks,” “slopes,” “egg rolls,” and of course “gooks.”


At the outset, Walt’s wife has just passed away, and his neighbors in an older Detroit neighborhood are being replaced by Asians. He resents the Hmong family next door but it does emerge, through some rather didactic exposition, that the Hmong fought with the United States against Vietnamese communist forces. Someone like Walt would have known that, but he is portrayed here as willfully ignorant and a bigot of considerable diversity. He also unloads on “dagos,” “micks,” and “colored guys,” and the script makes clear that this is all part of being a Real Man. No N-word or anti-gay jokes, however.


Walt’s white contemporaries are pretty much the same as him, so one gets the feeling that the entire Korean War generation is nothing more than a lost squad of racists, Archie Bunker on the big screen. Walt is handy at fixing things but can’t seem to prepare a meal beyond beef jerky and beer. He is also coughing up blood and it’s pretty clear he is on the way out. He’s a symbol of a dying city, dying industries, and a corrupt racist nation in which nobody has much of a chance, particularly immigrants.


Walt slowly makes friends with the Hmong next door, especially Thao, a bookish teenager fond of gardening. A Hmong gang tries to recruit Thao and tasks him to steal Walt’s 1972 Ford Gran Torino, which Walt bought new, after personally installed the steering column on the Ford assembly line. Walt never drives the car in the film, and prefers instead an older Ford pickup, a better vehicle to convey the redneck image. Thao fails to steal the Gran Torino, and Walt confronts the gang with an M-1 Garand, a weapon used in the Korean War and World War II. He tells one gangster to shove off, otherwise, he says, he will shoot him in the face then go inside and sleep like a baby. The gang backs off but tells Walt he better watch his back.


Walt does his Dirty Harry thing again, this time with a .45 automatic, when a trio of blacks, “spooks,” as he calls them, makes a move on Thao’s sister. For a Detroit location, blacks are rather rare, as are the police. There are not many Hmong there, either. A Hispanic gang, more suited to southern California, also threatens Thao but Walt never confronts them. He doesn’t interact much with his priest, though he manages a half-baked confession.


A Hmong holy man, “reads” Walt and finds some problem in his past. It turns out that, in Korea, Walt had killed a lot of people, including one unarmed enemy soldier who was only trying to surrender. Here is the familiar screen stereotype of the American veteran, crazed from his own atrocities and struggling with his demons until the end. There is no hint that American soldiers in Korea accomplished anything other than mass killing. Walt is really a composite of vets from WWII, Korea, and of course Vietnam.


Walt helps Thao, whom he has “manned up,” to get a construction job. This draws gang attacks on Thao, his sister, and their family. Things are building to a showdown, and Thao wants to team up with Walt and take them down. But Walt faces the gang alone, his own way. The denouement is not exactly Sudden Impact or Dirty Harry denouement, but Eastwood’s performance will please viewers and critics. One hopes Clint Eastwood makes more movies, including more that talk back to the left, because symbolizing a dying America and playing the Crazed American Veteran Stereotype is not the best way for a certified screen legend to bow out.

Lloyd Billingsley is the author of From Mainline to Sideline, the Social Witness of the National Council of Churches, and Hollywood Party: How Communism Seduced the American Film Industry in the 1930s and 1940s.

Ellie

[maverickmarine]

I thought this was great! I couldn't stop freakin' laughing!!! Man, all those comments he would make were outstanding! I know it wasn't a comedy but alot of it seemed like one to me.

[SGT7477]

Great show,lmfao.

[DocGreek]

I know that Mr. Eastwood, thinks a lot like us, and has tried...in his own way, to put those feelings, and opinions across, in directing, and staring in some terrific films. I'll miss him, but will NOT forget.....the Iwo Jima films, put things into "some" perspective. He WILL be missed!......SEMPER FI....Clint.....Doc Greek

[thedrifter]

Clint Eastwood's Libertarian-Conservative Vision

By David Swindle
FrontPageMagazine.com | 1/23/2009

With all the productions made by Hollywood's leftist actors and filmmakers, it's often easy to overlook Conservatives in the industry. With the widespread release of "Gran Torino," Clint Eastwood's first acted film in four years, the public will receive a bold reminder of a filmmaker who has managed to both act and direct in films with conservative themes for 40 years.

"Gran Torino," also directed by Eastwood, features the iconic actor as Walt Kowalski, a retired autoworker and Korean War veteran recently widowed. The traditional Kowalski is perpetually scowling at the world in which he finds himself. He's disgusted by the new generation's lack of respect – one of his grandchildren shows up at a funeral in a Detroit Lions jersey, another with bare midriff.

Returning home is no better. The mildly racist Walt is horrified to see his neighborhood filled with Asian immigrants, the younger generation of which have resorted to gang life. Walt gradually sheds his prejudices, though, as a series of events bring him into contact with his neighbors. In teenage Thao, he finds a boy who respects his elders and is concerned about his family's honor. Walt begins to mentor Thao, teaching him in the ways of masculinity and setting him up with a construction job. Thao's opportunity to make something of himself, though, is threatened by gang members who seek to draw him into their lifestyle and react violently when he resists. The Korean War veteran realizes that his neighborhood has become a war zone. Walt, now invested in the boy's future, realizes that Thao's opportunity to participate in the American Dream is threatened and reacts to defend him.

"Gran Torino" is noted as a return to the aggressive masculine persona that Eastwood first developed in the late '60s and early '70s. After first drawing attention for his role in the TV show Rawhide, Eastwood established himself in film by starring in Italian director Sergio Leone's "Fistful of Dollars" in 1964. Eastwood's Man With No Name was a new kind of Western protagonist, a bounty hunter who was motivated by self-interest. Eastwood would reprise the character in 1965's "For a Few Dollars More" and 1966's "The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly." This refocusing of the Western would lay the groundwork for the libertarian Westerns he would direct himself later in his career.

The urban setting of "Gran Torino" perhaps reminds viewers more of Eastwood's other iconic role as Detective Harry Callahan in director Don Siegel's "Dirty Harry" and its sequels. The film featured Callahan on the trail of Scorpio, a sadistic serial killer. When one of the murderer's victims was supposedly trapped with a limited oxygen supply, Callahan ignored legal bureaucracy and regulations, breaking into the killer's home without a search warrant and engaging in some "enhanced interrogation techniques" to try and push the madman into revealing the girl's location. It seems clear how a contemporary film might apply this attitude to a terrorist with knowledge of an impending attack. For portraying such a character the film was famously attacked by prominent film critic Pauline Kael as "fascist."

Longing for control of his artistic vision, Eastwood founded The Malpaso Company, later renamed Malpaso Productions, and began his directing career with 1971's "Play Misty for Me." In 1976, Eastwood would star in and direct "The Outlaw Josey Wales," a revisionist Western that showed a different facet of his libertarian vision. The hero of the film is a man who just wants to be left alone after the Civil War. The villains are a Union brigade that has abused its powers – representative of excessive government – that pursue Wales, wanting him to surrender to them.

We see a similar vision of man against government power in one of Eastwood's most celebrated films, the 1991 Best Picture Oscar Winner "Unforgiven." In that film, Eastwood puts a more human face on his "Fistful of Dollars" persona. He plays an aging gunslinger pursuing one final job, to kill two men who mutilated a prostitute and escaped with minimal punishment. Again, it's Eastwood conflicting with a corrupt government, this time in the form of the sheriff of Big Whiskey, Little Bill Daggett (Gene Hackman.) Second Amendment advocates will likely get a kick out of the fact that the sheriff enforces draconian gun control laws – all visitors to the town are required to surrender their firearms. Thus the tyrannical government is allowed to dominate – until Eastwood shows up.

It was Eastwood's more recent Best Picture winner, 2004's "Million Dollar Baby," that drew the attention of a faction of the conservative movement. The film's third act included content which infuriated social conservatives who interpreted the film as a defense of euthanasia. In an interview with Philip French of The Guardian, Eastwood responded to the criticism: "I heard people criticize me who hadn't even seen 'Million Dollar Baby.' I've heard people say he's done this thing about euthanasia, and they'd get all upset. I'd go - wait a second, have you seen the picture? Are you interested in the people? Are you interested in the plight of a man who has never had a relationship with the daughter he wanted to have a relationship with?"

In an interview with New York Times columnist Frank Rich, Eastwood laid out the film's conservative vision. Eastwood pointed out that the film features a character "willing to pull herself up by the bootstraps, to work hard and persevere no matter what." He further pointed out, "And the villains in the movie include people who are participating in welfare fraud." The film juxtaposes the working class boxer Maggie (Hilary Swank), who fights to improve her situation as opposed to her poor family members who remain at the bottom because of their participation in a culture of laziness and immorality.

In these interviews, Eastwood makes clear his philosophy of limited government. In a more recent interview with Fox News's Neil Cavuto he explains the origin of his political ideology: "Well, it's — you know, I started out in — my first voting was for Dwight Eisenhower in 1952. And the — so, I became a Republican then. And I always liked their kind of philosophy of less government, and watching the spending, and not spending more." Eastwood is noted for actually having political experience; he served as mayor of California's Carmel-by-the-Sea in the '80s.

Eastwood hesitates to embrace the conservative label, though. In the interview with French he said, "I'm not really conservative. I'm conservative on certain things. I believe in less government. I believe in fiscal responsibility and all those things that maybe Republicans used to believe in but don't anymore."

Within Eastwood's films, though, we see the transition from libertarianism to libertarian-conservatism. One can start out with a vision of freedom – that we must have a society in which individuals have the opportunity to pursue their own destinies and "everyone leaves everyone else alone," as Eastwood likes to sum up his views. Yet one becomes conservative when he comes to the realization that that freedom must be defended from those who threaten it; it must be conserved. We see this first manifest in "Dirty Harry" when the Eastwood character goes to extreme measures to confront a sociopath who threatens a city's freedom.

It's ultimately in "Gran Torino," though, that this idea gets its clearest expression. We want a society in which the next generation has the same opportunities of individual liberty to pursue their dreams. In order for the next generation to enjoy that freedom, we must confront sociopaths and nihilists – whether they be international Islamofascists or just local criminal gangs – who would threaten that fundamental American Vision.

David Swindle is a free lance writer, film critic, and blogger. He is currently working on a book on the ideas of David Horowitz, the research for which can be read and contributed to at his blog Books In Depth. He can be contacted at DavidSwindle@gmail.com.

Ellie

[Marine1955]

Very Well Put

[Twitchell]

I just saw it yesterday. I thought it was awsome. I kind of expected a few things to be different, but it was a hell of a show. Not to mention FUNNY AS ****!