Gran Torino

Clint Eastwood is a scary, scary old man. His wife's just died, he hates the
rest of his family, with good cause, because they're assholes to a man, he's a
grumpy old racist, and his neighbourhood has been largely overtaken by
Vietnamese immigrants. He is, himself, a veteran of the Korean war, the things
he did there have never sat right with him, and his neighbours seem to remind
him of that.

As the film progresses, he finds that he's got more in common with the decent
hard-working folk living next door than his soft, spoiled family, and gets
involved in their lives, mentoring the young lad, and eventually coming into
conflict with the gang who want the lad to join, and won't take no for an
answer.

It's quite a broad, simplified tale. The good people are good, the bad are bad,
and straight talk and guts are what counts in the end. In many ways, it's a
Western. It's the old grizzled gunman saving the decent hardworking farmers
from the bandits. It's either a classic plot or a cliched one, depending on
your outlook.

What sets the film apart is Clint's performance. For a guy pushing eighty, he
is still the scariest bastard alive. If anything, he's just getting scarier the
more time goes on. At one point he growls "Ever notice how you come across
somebody once in a while you shouldn't have fucked with? That's me." And he
sells that line to the hilt. Also he is quite staggeringly rude and offensive
to everyone; I said he was racist earlier, I almost don't think that's fair. He
hates *everyone*, pretty much. It's a towering performance, that takes this
film a few rungs above the manly man's fable that it would otherwise have been.