Gran Torino

Gran Torino
By: Heather Riley


Over the many years Clint Eastwood has produced and casted in many classic movies including “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly,” made in 1966, “Paint Your Wagon,” made in 1969 and “Dirty Harry,” made in 1971. Clint Eastwood won four Oscar for his film "Million Dollar Baby" and many nominations throughout the years. With his movies he has given not only great entertainment but, touching messages.
In the current film “Gran Torino,” Eastwood plays a very crotchety, racist, old veteran whose wife has just passed and is living alone in a Detroit neighborhood populated of Asians with only his golden retriever Daisy, and his Classic ’72 Gran Torino (which everyone envies, including his young and greedy granddaughter.)
As the movie plays out, Korean War veteran Walter Kowalski (Eastwood) expresses his hate for quote, unquote, “Gooks.” He soon finds, when he saves his neighbors Hmong daughter from a group of African American gangsters, that he has more in common with the foreign family then with his own flesh and blood.
Walter is faced with reality that integrity is increasingly lacking in the youth of the neighborhood when his garage is broken into one night and he finds a young boy trying to steal his Gran Torino as an initiation into a gang. As a result Walter challenges them when they make a threat on his life.
Eastwood was nominated for a Golden Globe for the best original song in a motion picture. Suprizingly, He did not win the award. In an interview with people magazine, he was asked why he chose to play the part of Walter Kowalski; Eastwood said that he felt that he knew the part well because he grew up in a different time where people weren't afraid to say what they were thinking.
I asked one of the people that viewed the movie what their opinion about the film was and a Tyler Ballard responded, ”it was an amazing movie that addressed a problem in today’s society that is overlooked a lot of the time.”
The movie came out in theatres Jan. 9 of 2009 and continues to play in theatres.