Gran Torino

A film set in a neighbourhood in Detroit. Walt Kowalski has just buried his wife. He is a Korea veteran, a retired factory worker, and the last white man on his street. His neighbours are a Hmong family. Walt does not like them and says so at every opportunity. The neighbour's son Thao is being pressed by a gang. His first task is to steal the car in Walt's garage; he is caught. The family sends him to work for Walt. The man has him do jobs around the neighbourhood, teaches him to use tools and finds him work. From there the film is a coming together. Meals, a birthday, a barber's shop and a garage. The gang comes back. What the narrative is interested in is not racism but restitution: Walt never becomes a likeable man, does not stop saying what he says, and the film does not forgive him, it only shows his last decision. He tells once about something he did in Korea, and that moment sits at the centre of the film. The ending is not where it is expected. Walt's solution is not to fight, and that decision is the whole idea of the film. Most of the Hmong actors are not professionals and were found within the community; it was the first large production in Hollywood to put them at its centre. Clint Eastwood, Bee Vang, Ahney Her and Christopher Carley are in the cast. Clint Eastwood directed. Who it is for: anyone who likes plainly told drama built on one character. Who it is not for: anyone who cannot take the racist language in it; the narrative carries it without softening.