Multiple Academy Award winner Clint Eastwood stars in the drama
Gran Torino, marking his first film role since his Oscar-winning
film Million Dollar Baby. Eastwood stars as an iron-willed and
inflexible Korean War veteran, living in a changing world, who is
forced by his immigrant neighbors to confront his own long-held
prejudices.
Retired auto worker Walt Kowalski fills his days with home repair,
beer, and monthly trips to the barber. Though his late wifes final
wish was for him to take confession, for Waltan embittered veteran
of the Korean War who keeps his M-1 rifle cleaned and readytheres
nothing to confess. And no one he trusts enough to confess to other
than his dog, Daisy.
The people he once called his neighbors have all moved or passed
away, replaced by the Hmong immigrants he despises. Resentful of
virtually everything he seesthe drooping eaves, overgrown lawns and
the foreign faces surrounding him; the aimless gangs of Hmong,
Latino and African American teenagers who all think the
neighborhood belongs to them; the callow strangers his children
have grown up to beWalt is just waiting out the rest of his
life.
Until the night someone tries to steal his Gran Torino.
Still gleaming as it did the day Walt himself helped roll it off
the assembly line decades ago, the Gran Torino brings his shy
teenaged neighbor Thao (Bee Vang) into his life when Hmong
gang-bangers pressure the boy into trying to steal it.
But Walt stands in the way of both the heist and the gang, making
him the reluctant hero of the neighborhoodespecially to Thaos
mother and older sister, Sue (Ahney Her), who insist that Thao work
for Walt as a way to make amends. Though he initially wants nothing
to do with these people, Walt eventually gives in and puts the boy
to work fixing up the neighborhood, setting into motion an unlikely
friendship that will change both their lives.
Through Thao and his familys unrelenting kindness, Walt eventually
comes to understand certain truths about the people next door. And
about himself. These peopleprovincial refugees from a cruel
pasthave more in common with Walt than he has with his own family,
and reveal to him parts of his soul that have been walled off since
the warlike the Gran Torino preserved in the shadows of his
garage.
