Clint Eastwood Creates an Unforgettable Character
"Get off my lawn," snarls Walt Kowalski (Clint Eastwood) in the highly entertaining Gran Torino (2008). Walt is a lonely, alienated, cantankerous retired autoworker whose prize possession is a 1972 Gran Torino, a car he helped build when he worked at Ford. He lives in the Detroit area, and his shabby neighborhood is filling up with immigrants. The family next door is Hmong, a Southeast Asian mountain people, and Walt refers to them using various racial slurs. Walt's view of America was formed in the 1950s, and his combat experience during the Korean War left him with demons. In the 21st century he is hopelessly politically incorrect, but he has an inner compulsion to try to perform some meaningful act.
Famous for playing Dirty Harry in crime thrillers and the Man With No Name in spaghetti westerns, Eastwood is so perfectly suited to the role of Walt Kowalski that it's impossible to imagine anyone else in it. In addition to his superb performance as Gran Torino's main character, Eastwood also directed and produced, and he has just the right sensibility to tell this pulpy tale in a deliberately paced, uncomplicated, unfussy way. There is violence, but there is also humor, and the movie is extremely humanistic and emotionally engaging. Gran Torino proves once again that Eastwood (Mystic River, Million Dollar Baby, Letters From Iwo Jima) is one of the great storytellers.
A Pair of Featurettes
The only bonus materials on the Gran Torino DVD are two featurettes that together have a total runtime barely over 13 minutes. Walt Kowalski, the movie's central character, represents a bygone era when American men had a longstanding, ongoing love affair with Detroit automobiles, and both featurettes center on that idea.
The better of the two featurettes is "Manning the Wheel," which runs a little over nine minutes. In it men who were involved in making the film talk about their first car and/or their dream car. Eastwood recalls his first was a 1932 Chevy coupe he bought for 25 dollars.
The other featurette is "Gran Torino: More Than a Car," which is just under four minutes long. This mostly involves interviewing people at the Woodward Dream Cruise, an annual event where hundreds of thousands gather in the Detroit area to celebrate classic car culture. The focal point has tens of thousands cruising in old cars along a 16-mile stretch of Woodward Avenue as it passes through half a dozen communities.
These two extras aren't all that closely connected to the feature film. As Eastwood says, "It's not really a car picture. The car is just a symbol of part of Walt."
DVD Details
Below I have listed all the details for the DVD containing Gran Torino.
Release Date: June 9, 2009
Feature Film Runtime: 1 hour 56 minutes
MPAA Rating: R for Language Throughout and Some Violence
Widescreen (2.35:1), Color
English Dolby Digital 5.1
Spanish-Dubbed Soundtrack
French-Dubbed Soundtrack
English for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing
Spanish Subtitles
French Subtitles
Manning the Wheel (9 min.)
Gran Torino: More Than a Car (4 min.)
