'Gran Torino' Movie Trailers and Reviews

Gran Torino

Starring: Clint Eastwood, Cory Hardrict, John Carroll Lynch, Geraldine Hughes, Brian Haley

Director: Clint Eastwood

Release Date: January 9th, 2009
Release Date: 27th February, 2009

Studio: Warner Bros.

Synopsis: Walt Kowalski is a widower who holds onto his prejudices despite the changes in his Michigan neighborhood and the world around him. Kowalski is a grumpy, tough-minded, unhappy an old man, who can’t get along with either his kids or his neighbors, a Korean War veteran whose prize possession is a 1972 Gran Torino he keeps in mint condition. When his neighbor Thao, a young Hmong teenager under pressure from his gang member cousin, tries to steal his Gran Torino, Kowalski sets out to reform the youth. Drawn against his will into the life of Thao’s family, Kowalski is soon taking steps to protect them from the gangs that infest their neighborhood.

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Gran Torino DVD (Widescreen Edition)
Starring: Clint Eastwood, Brian Haley Rating: R

Gran Torino [Blu-ray] (Amazon Digital Bundle + Digital Copy and BD-Live)
Starring: Clint Eastwood, Brian Haley Rating: R

Gran Torino DVD
Starring: Clint Eastwood, Brian Haley Rating: 15

Gran Torino [Blu-ray]
Starring: Clint Eastwood, Brian Haley Rating: 15

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Movie Links

Official ‘Gran Torino’ Movie Website
‘Gran Torino’ on IMDb

About the Movie

Gran Torino is a 2008 Golden Globe-nominated American drama film directed and produced by Clint Eastwood, who also stars in the film. The film marks Eastwood’s return to a lead acting role after four years, his last leading role having been in Million Dollar Baby. The film features a predominantly Hmong cast, as well as Eastwood’s younger son, Scott Eastwood. Eastwood’s older son, Kyle Eastwood, provided the score. The film opened to theaters in a limited release in North America on December 12, 2008, and later to a worldwide release on January 9, 2009.

The story follows Walt Kowalski, a recently widowed Korean War veteran with an arrogant family who is never close to him. On a dare by his cousin for initiation into a gang, Thao, Walt’s young neighbor, is caught attempting to steal his prized 1972 Ford Gran Torino. Kowalski develops a relationship with the boy and his family. Gran Torino was a critical success, and became Eastwood’s most lucrative film by grossing over $263 million worldwide.

Movie Reviews

Movie Review by Ben Kenber

Score – 4 out of 4

So, this is supposedly Clint Eastwood’s swan song as an actor. Of course, he said the same thing after his Oscar winning film “Million Dollar Baby,” so this might just be a publicity stunt designed to get the film a bigger audience. Wasn’t this the same guy who said after winning the Best Director Oscar for “Million Dollar Baby” that he was “just a kid?” Age certainly hasn’t taken Eastwood’s ability as a director, and it adds to his work as an actor. This is certainly the case with his first starring role in several years in “Gran Torino.” As disgruntled Korean War veteran Walt Kowalski, he gives a great performance that has a bit of Dirty Harry, a bit of Will Muny from “Unforgiven,” some of Frankie Dunn from “Million Dollar Baby,” and that burning glare that is still stuck in my memory from when I first saw “City Heat.” That one was practically the only Clint Eastwood that I could see as a kid, and it had a lot of bad language for a PG rated movie.

Anyway, “Gran Torino” starts with Walt at his wife’s funeral, and with him staring disdainfully at his grandkids who are not even trying to take any of this seriously. His teenage granddaughter is more interested in texting her friends than listening to the priest giving his sermon. Of course, this may have to with the fact that Walt Kowalski is not the most likable of people to put it mildly. At the reception after the funeral, he proves to be cold and distant from just about everyone close to him, and he’s quite dismissive to his grown kids who want to help him. Everyone’s helping him, and he treats it like it’s an insult.

Read the Full ‘Gran Torino’ Movie Review at FilmArcade.net

Movie Review by Marty Meltz

Quality – 8 out of 10

This is class.

With most movies, I feel that you care little about who’s the director, what his/her background is, in what films the lead has starred, what the film is derived from — all things that have nothing directly to do with why you bought a ticket, namely, to be entertained in the moment.

Clint Eastwood is the most profound exception. To say that “Gran Torino” is the culmination of this actor-director’s career is to trivialize it. Eastwood is a walking culmination. He is and has always been the finish piece. We suspected that from his immortal “Dirty Harry.” There is so much jarring force which radiates from his flinty, weathered face and measured words that he has created a reputation that sets up every scene, each action, each utterance. The statements he is making by his very presence, his very persona, are almost hypnotic. Not that they they are profound in themselves, no — but that his total screen image, audio and visual, in the way that it selects, enhances and projects, is spellbinding.

Here he is, at 78, again the manly man who needs no feats of physical strength to vibrate masculinity. And his film itself? No need for modern styling, pounding close-ups and manipulative pacing for today’s limited attention-span audiences.

No. He owns every scene. They are extensions and expansions of his essence. He plays here a man forgotten by a world he has lost; it won’t ever wait for him — it is gone. The film’s strengths include a canny balance of compelling drama and innumerable laughs, especially early on. There are the catchy spontaneous performances by the amateur Hmong cast (from the mountains of Cambodia, Vietnam and Laos who fled in panic when the Americans vacated in 1975) who elicit just the precise amount of sentimentality. There are the necessary shootouts. And there is Eastwood, who says, “I blow a hole in your face and sleep like a baby” leaving no doubt that he means it.

And there is the dangerous desperation of street gangs, confrontation their only measure of manhood..

Walt Kowalsky is now a bitter man, radiating hate for just about everybody everywhere.
He has just now seen the burial of his longtime wife.

He passes all of his time in anger and orneriness, hating his own “spoiled” family of two sons for their affluence, rejecting their offers of financial help. Here in a working class Detroit neighborhood of largely Asians he sits on his front porch, his hobby: beer chugging. His Labrador, Daisy, is his only friend. He steams at people — democratically: no favoritism here, this unbridled bigot utters racist profanity at every faith and creed, equally. But it’s a no-harm-intended diatribe, much like that of the immortal Archie Bunker.

But the world around him won’t let him be. A family of Hmong immigrants lives next door in a rundown house. This is a grandmother, a mother and two teenagers — a withdrawn boy Thao (Bee Vang) and more forthright girl Sue (Ahney Her).

The local Hmong gang, whose leader is Thao’s cousin, is pressing him to join the gang. He shrugs OK but as a test of worthiness, he’s required to to steal a car. He’ll try that on Kowalski’s prize 1972 Ford Gran Torino. But that fails and almost gets him killed by the armed owner himself.

Consistent with their code of honor, the boy’s family demands that he do penance by working for Kowalsky for awhile. Neither is happy about that.

Kowalsky is to become a protector of Sue, whom he rescues from some menacing black street kids looking to a gangbang.

We’ll recollect the immortal “Dirty Harry” scene in which he took on dangerous types, daring them in lethal scenes. And here he goes as the gangbangers return for revenge.

A tiny glimmer of good in Kowalsky surfaces as he dedicates himself more and more with the siblings, empathizing with their ambitions to better their lives. He says, “I have more in common with these gooks than with my own spoiled, rotten family.”

We must abide the tragic ending. It is admirably well thought-out and even surprising. Sad but happy. It resolves so much.