Gran Torino

Clint Eastwood is the last in the line of Hollywood tough guys. The vast majority of today's manly stars are more studly than anything else. They are descendants of the House of Newman, where your manliness is defined by sexiness and virility. Eastwood is the last great King of the House of Wayne. And while John Wayne defined macho, Lee Marvin defined tough, and Steve McQueen defined cool, Eastwood's lasting legacy to film may be in defining ornery. Dirty Harry Callahan, Blondie, Gunny Highway, Josey Wales. The man has made a career of not suffering fools gladly.

At 78, it's a thin line between tough-guy ornery and old-man crotchety. Eastwood walks that line with ease in Gran Torino. He plays Walt Kowalski, the last of the old factory workers in his Michigan neighborhood. Slowly but surely the remaining Polish working-class families have left, and in their place is America's new working class; a mix of ethnicities and races, none of which please Walt.

Don't hold it against him, though, because there isn't much left in this life that does please him. We meet Walt at his wife's funeral. We watch him seethe as his grand kids walk in, late, wearing football jerseys, mid-riff shirts and belly-button rings. He snarls at his sons, who spend the entirety of the post-funeral gathering counting the minutes and arguing with their wives about the etiquette of an early departure. He growls racist epithets at his new neighbors, a Hmong family, threatening them with his comparison to the Koreans he killed some 50-plus years ago. He forcibly removes his son from a birthday celebration for suggesting he move into a retirement community.

So it comes as a surprise to everyone, then, when Walt takes decisive action to defend the next door neighbor from a Hmong gang. The youngest son, Thao (Bee Vang in his debut film), is a dork. Dogged by his sister, mother, and grandmother, bullied by his cousins, and ignored by everyone else, Thao tries to fit in by joining the gang. His initiation? Steal Walt's 1972 Gran Torino. The boy fails, and finds facing the business end of Walt's army-issue M1 rifle. Just one night later, a carload of gang members come to take Thao away. The struggle spills onto Walt's lawn, and the M1 makes it's second of many more appearances in the film, this time to defend Thao.

Now a neighborhood hero, Walt bristles at the attention his foreign neighbors give him. Deliveries of flowers and food from a grateful Hmong community are met with racist derision. Overtures at friendship by Thao's sister Sue (Ahney Hur, also her debut) are parried. But the young woman is relentless in her outreach, and Walt soon warms to the family's hospitality.

Seeing his neighbors as people for the first time, Walt perches himself on the porch like a rooster overseeing the business of the coop. Any signs of danger are met with aggressive defense. Walt has found new meaning in late life. The young toughs of the neighborhood have found a new and challenging target.

If there is a hint of crotchety in Eastwood's performance, it's played for laughs, and any hint of doddering evaporates quickly when the going gets tough. Crotchety people complain about hoodlums. Ornery people threaten them with rifles and handguns. Eastwood knows he's 78, and knows viewers will wonder whether his fraying body can hang on to the bridle of his rage. It can, of course, and he toys with our doubt. Never has the prototypical old man demand of "Get off my lawn" carried such fearsome authority and malice. If Walt Kowaksi is indeed Eastwood's last on-screen performance, then he leaves the stage with his reputation intact, and in the process gives us one more great anti-hero to fear and admire.

While Eastwood shines, the remaining cast of unknowns struggle to keep up. Vang and Her get the most screen time with the legend. While Her has her moments, both show their inexperience. It's enough to take you out of critical scenes; Her's feigned nonchalance at a potential sexual assault feels a little too forward and defiant; Vang's screams of betrayal and frustration with Walt a the end of the film come off as too childish and outraged. Christopher Carley's Father Janovich, the young and determined priest set to save Walt's soul is another nuisance to Walt for his naivete, and to viewers for his grating performance.

The dialogue is also a bit too on the nose and uneven, which, when combined with shaky supporting performances, sometimes gave the movie a slightly amateurish feel. At those moments when the movie loses focus, it becomes a slightly-better better version of Falling Down. Overall, however, Eastwood's Oscar-caliber performance saves the film from Rental Hell and makes it worthy of an in-theater experience.