Gran Torino
Gran Torino was a Ford product from a bygone era produced with muscle and attitude and in 1973 one was assembled in Detroit by auto worker Walt Kowalski (Clint Eastwood), a war vet with muscle and attitude from a bygone era. Walt bought the car off the line and it remains his price and joy today as it sits in the garage/workshop behind his tidy house in a motor city suburb currently in transition. To say the least Walt is not a fan of the rainbow effect of the ethnic diversity going on around him as he spews racist diatribes with a lack of filters that would make Archie Bunker cringe. Walt has reached a point in his life where everything he’s worked for seems to be all for naught. His children and grandchildren are a complete disappointment and his wife has just died but not before assigning Father Janovich (Christopher Carley) an annoying fresh faced priest the task of saving his soul – a duty that he takes seriously. The one bright light in his life comes slowly and from an unlikely source, Sue Lor (Ahney Her) the sparkey teenage girl next door who is the first generation American of an immigrant Hmong family from Thailand. All this plays out with pathos and a lot of laughs until Thao Vang Lor (Bee Vang) an Asian gang initiate tries to steal the Gran Torino. At that point Walt’s leftover arsenal from Korea comes out of mothballs. Eastwood directs himself as Walt, a septuagenarian Dirty Harry who is a real guilty treat to watch.