"There is a way to be good again"

Today we saw the movie "Gran Torino". It's directed by Clint Eastwood, and was recognized by American Film Institute as one of the Ten Best Films of 2008. Eastwood himself is not only the director of the movie but also the main character Walt Kowalski.

Walt Kowalski lives in a so called ”ghetto neighborhood”, formerly populated by the white working class families, his neighborhood is now filled up mostly with poor Asian families. He is a retired Ford factory worker and also a Korean War veteran. We can easily see that he struggles with a lot pain, from losing his wife, maybe guilt from killing in the war? He is a man a lot of people find scary and cold, even his two sons don’t appear to like him much.

Walt’s Hmong neighbor Thao one day tries to steal his Gran Torino after being pressured by his cousin and his gang. Walt catches the Hmong boy, and gets really mad at him. To make up for Thao’s behavior, the Hmong family next door forces their son Thao to be at Walt’s service for the next two weeks. This becomes the start of an unexpected friendship, which changes both of their lives. Walt Kowalski, the rude, bitter and recently widowed man and the Hmong Asian boy Thao, who didn’t fit in anywhere, because he didn’t wanted to be a gangster like rest of the boys in his village.

We can see different conflicts in this movie. An example is the conflict between the two gangs in the village, the Asian and the white, another one is the conflict between Thao and his cousin and his friends. But maybe the main conflict in the movie is the one Walt Kowalski has with himself and his thoughts and point-of-views that changes dramatically throughout the movie.

I think this is an exceptionally movie, I would love to recommend to everyone. It’s very intense and dramatically, but also very loving and emotional.

- Rikke