Make my day, Clint

Deborah Ross

Wednesday, 18th February 2009

Gran Torino
15, Nationwide

Gran Torino is a Clint Eastwood film — what, he’s still alive? — and it’s about a grouchy old fella who is hard-core racist but then gets involved with the Asian family next door and, would you believe it, discovers they are quite decent, really. This is probably not a very good film. It is clunky, corny, overblown and so obvious it even features one of those early-on coughs you know isn’t going to pan out as good news. One day, I would like to see a non-meaningful cough in a film; would like to hear a doctor say, ‘The tests are back and it’s nothing, a tickle...’ It’s a  small dream of mine. (I was always told to dream big, but never had the time or the energy.)

Now, where were we? Oh, yes. It’s probably not a very good film but you know what? It’s not a very good film but is good nevertheless. I know! Crazy! How does that work? It works because it’s a Clint Eastwood film. With any other actor, Gran Torino would be what it is — a sentimental, possibly unbearable fable about a coughing bigot redeemed — but, with Clint as star and director, this is as much about Clint’s own cinematic history, and the power of that, as anything, and it’s both fascinating and enthralling. By cinematic history, I am talking about the macho, anti-hero roles of the spaghetti westerns and Dirty Harry rather than the one he did with the monkey. I’m talking about Clint as that lone instrument of vengeance. Actually, another small dream of mine is to see Eastwood in a film where, before he does anything, he turns up at his local Citizens Advice Bureau and asks, ‘Where does the law stand on this and how might I best operate within it?’ And if he then gave a non-meaningful cough, that would be great. It would make my day.

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