Had we just gone into “Gran Torino” blind, we probably would have been as put off by Clint Eastwood’s perma-scowl and growl as much as people as The New York Times’ Michael Cieply, who writes that the cute Labrador mutt in the film is more personable than he is. Or we’d feel like In Contention did when they said (via Hollywood Elsewhere) that Razzie chief John Wilson “and his band of gleefully destructive voters may (regrettably) have a field [day]” (Tapley has since pulled the “review,” probably at the behest of Warners).
But it’s all right there on the page and to Eastwood’s credit he basically bangs out the film shot for shot as is written which isn’t easy to do. Eastwood’s Walt Kowalski codger character is an unapologetic racist prick and Eastwood is given credit for not softening his edges at all in the feature. Oscar might be out of reach (as David Poland suggests and we already predicted), and it might not be as great as Peter Hammond thinks, but the film is a winner in that it accomplishes everything that was written and everything that its template set out to achieve (it’s also a lot funnier than you’d think). Now whether people jive with that script/template is another story, it’s probably going to be polarizing without having pre-informed yourself with the screenplay, but we felt like it really helped us understand the character a lot better than the one-dimension served in the trailer (as all trailers are wont to do).