RyoHazuki

Saw it last night and thought it was very good. My only quibble was some of the children's acting was uneven. I think this movie broke the record for most racial slurs I've ever heard in a film. The audience was old and they laughed at the slurs a little too much. This film would probably be one to watch in the living room rather than a theater. But yeah overall it was a great movie. Eastwood is such a badass is blows my mind.

dvdcooler

Its a good film overall but its not perfect, and doesn't touch some of Clint's previous efforts. I was engaged for the first 40 minutes or so, it lost me, and then towards the end I got back into it again.

Its quite slow paced, and mostly focuses on Clint's relationship with the neighbor boy...don't expect an action fest, this is very much a character drama and the trailer can be misleading in that sense.

utopianz14

The audience at the screening I attended wasn't old, but I noticed the same thing. Each time Eastwood's character said a slur, the audience would burst out laughing, regardless of the context. Some of it was intentionally funny, but it was shocking how comfortable everyone was with these epithets.

At first, I thought that I might have been oversensitive to the slurs because of my race, but I'm beginning to think that it was the audience that is desensitized to them.

toddly6666

Awesome movie. Clint Eastwood is god. He shouldn't retire from acting.

Boba Fett

I don't know it is comical in a dark way, the way he slings the slurs. It's also Eastwood; he's so beloved even when he plays a racist, people love him.

Sanjuro37

A buddy of mine has a dad who gets screeners, so I got to peep this early. For a film that pretty much exists entirely within the bubble that Eastwood's movies usually fit, it is brilliant at what it does. Even though Eastwood, who is one of the best actor's directors around, doesn't get great performances out of his cast, he rocks it by taking all the characters he's ever played and slightly tweaking them into comedic territory. It's not funny when he's growling slurs, but he gets constant laughs in this. I was especially surprised that it wasn't some crazy gang warfare action movie like the trailer (and face it, the title) suggests. I don't think it excels in any one area enough to be a major awards contender (the only one I can think of is Picture, but Slumdog is better), but it's a marvelously understated film and probably the second best of Eastwood's work this decade (the first being Letters From Iwo Jima).

grrr

I found the film borderline unwatchable. The script is ridiculous, the acting is uniformly terrible, and the conclusion of the film is as cliched as anything Eastwood has ever directed.

Gran Torino is a hamfisted morality play devoid of subtlety or believable characterization. It is amateurish in every respect, from its approach to relationships between ethnicities and generations (one of the keys to the film that has been ignored in most reviews) to the production values and acting.

You always go into a film wanting to give it a fair shake, but when a screenplay squanders its audience's good will with a cartoonish scene every five minutes (teenagers texting their friends during their own grandmother's funeral, old men growling for kids to get off their lawn, ridiculously foul-mouthed barbers who keep shotguns next to their razors and combs), the film deserves every last drop of bile it receives.

This film is going to polarize viewers in the same way as Crash and MDB, and I wouldn't be surprised to see it capture several awards in a few months. Don't be fooled--this film is Crash's kissing cousin and another in a long line of preachy, manipulative, and insulting attempts to address the cultural gaps existing in the United States.

Sanjuro37

Yeah, it's contrived, cliched, and pretty much all of Walt's family should have just been written out, but I couldn't help but love it. Eastwood was the only good actor in it, but since all but about 12 shots feature him it's not a big problem. Maybe because for once I didn't have to put up with melodrama Eastwood stuffs into his films (see: MDB, Changeling, and Mystic River even though that was enjoyable), but I found nothing hamfisted about his friendship with the two teens. If he suddenly became not racist, THAT would have been absurd, but every racist has a family that they consider "the good ones."

Still, if that Screenplay gets nominated I'm going to scream.

LickTheABCs

+ 1000

Aegean2007

Thank you. My dad and I just saw it and we both thought the same thing. I thought that I was crazy, with everybody else thinking it was so good. My dad usually likes these kinds of everyday life-lesson type movies and even he was rolling his eyes and cracking up at it during it. We both laughed for about 5 minutes straight after hearing the song at the end, too.

conscience

Pretty good film. The ending feels rushed, but it doesn't hurt the movie that much.

"Big gay spoiler...It just looks like hell."

Mikael79

I'm really looking forward to this one. I'll probably try to see it sometime this weekend, as I don't want to deal with the Christmas Day crowd.

Swearengen

I read this term in the review of Gran Torino, by Brian Orndorf and felt it needed some discussion.

I haven't seen Gran Torino myself, only read the top paragraph of Orndorfs review, since I bumped into this statement:

"...and the manner Eastwood sticks to perhaps outdated storytelling techniques..."

That is something I've thought about a lot lately. Not this statement, but "outdated storytelling techniques". I have the feeling that many people rate movies negatively, "just" because of that (Orndorf doesn't, he just brings the concept up) and thus often fail to recognize other qualities which in my opinion ranks far above, what kind of storytelling technique a director chooses for his movie.

I'm not to say anything about Gran Torino, cause I haven't seen it yet, but I've heard the exact same critique from a lot of people and reviewers against Australia, a movie I ALSO haven't seen

Personally I don't care about the lifespan of techniques, because they are indefinite to me. A technique invented by Renoir in the 30'ies, used by Eastwood in the 70'ies and perhaps again in 2008, why should it be outdated?

I believe we're living in the times of trends and we can't get fast enough from A to B, just to declare "been there done that". As an example, many praise the shaky cam technique from Greengrass' movies to a point, where they also start to criticize already made movies and scenes, where shaky cam hasn't been used.

I admit, that different techniques are neccesary as means to different solutions, but a conservative storytelling technique could be as effective, as a Warhol solution. Plot, acting and timing will always be key elements far far more important, than choosing techniques that are hip.

That's why I still love to watch Casablanca, Regle De Jeu, Vertigo, What A Wonderful Life, The Adventures of Robin Hood and good ol' Charlie Chaplin. Ageless!!! Timeless!!! Indefinite!!!

Superboy

thought this movie was great! Seriously, nothing like what I expected going in. Probably one of the best movies of the year.

B5Erik

GOOD storytelling/filmmaking techniques are NEVER outdated.

Patman

"Gran Torino" is a fine addition to the Clint Eastwood film catalogue, where the focus on character and drama keeps the audience's attention quite easily throughout its 2 hour running time, while providing a tale of honor and redemption, built upon unlikely bonding of characters from different times and different cultures.

Eastwood's Walter Kowalski was an entertaining old curmudgeon, and Eastwood knows exactly how to mine laughs from the simplest lines of dialouge, or even a simple trailing growl as Walter goes off-camera. The film is very funny and heartwarming in spots for its first 2/3 of the film, but the final act shifts gears and ends up being courageous and dramatic.

If this is Eastwood's last acting role in films, it's a testament to his screen presence and adds a solid bookend to a long and distinguished film careeer.

I give it 3.75 stars, or a grade of A-.

Raul3

I had to search for this thread...

First I loved the movie, easily in my top 10 this year. Now, I didn't like that Walt was a caricature of an old timer. I know, there are people like that, but in the movie it looked like a caricature. People kept laughing a lot during the movie, and yeah, in my showing people were laughing at the racial slurs. And I watched the movie in downtown San Francisco. I don't consider Walter a racist, it's just that he leaves in another time. He still believes american cars are the best cars.

But Clint Eastwood is just too good, he owns the movie.

Finisher

Gran Torino is a eulogy for Eastwood's badass persona and the bygone era that respected honor and propriety.

matome

The #1 movie of the year for me. Eastwood is cliche-proof. He can breathe new life into anything.

NoirFan

A decent film, but the plot machinations were entirely predictable and you could spot the ending a mile away. Here's my one question - are there actually people who want Detroit Lions season tickets?

Tuan Jim

Enjoyed it a lot myself. While there was quite a lot of laughing in my theater (suburban N. VA), there was also a nice round of applause at the end.

Honestly, since I'd barely seen any trailers, I didn't really see the ending coming in the way it did. I guess I was expecting something a bit more "old-school." That said, predictable or not, it's still not a bad thing to tell a story in a straightforward manner - I don't want to go into every flick expecting the next "Sixth Sense" necessarily. "Straight up" works plenty of times for me as well.

bluetoast

Just because people laughed at some of the offensive things Clint Eastwood's character says doesn't mean those people are like "Look at me, I'm racist." It could also be attributed to not being used to Eastwood saying such things, nervous laughter at the dialogue, the bluntness of how he acts, etc.

As for me, I really enjoyed this movie, although (and this is something I rarely do) I walked in late, so I came in during the part where Eastwood was pissed about his granddaughter's dress at the funeral. I guess that was basically the beginning though.

Tuan Jim

Yeah, it just panned down showing Eastwood standing there, then showed his first 3 grandsons coming in (irreverently in different ways) and then the grand-daughter.

Raul3

Did the film had grain? To make it look like a 70s movie? or something like that.

I just want to be sure. The theater where I watched the movie is one of my favorites and always has a top notch presentation.

But at the beginning that grain was kinda distracting, then I thoght it was kinda an homage to the 70s and just enjoyed the movie.

PopcornTreeCt

I was thinking the same thing.

Overall, the movie was meh. Granted it wasn't as bad as the trailer made it out to be.