Multiple Academy Award winner Clint
Eastwood stars in the drama "Gran Torino," marking his first
film role since his Oscar-winning film "Million Dollar
Baby." Eastwood stars as an iron-willed and inflexible
Korean War veteran, living in a changing world, who is
forced by his immigrant neighbors to confront his own
long-held prejudices.
Retired auto worker Walt Kowalski fills his days with home
repair, beer, and monthly trips to the barber. Though his
late wife's final wish was for him to take confession, for
Walt--an embittered veteran of the Korean War who keeps his
M-1 rifle cleaned and ready--there's nothing to confess. And
no one he trusts enough to confess to other than his dog,
Daisy.
The people he once called his neighbors have all moved or
passed away, replaced by the Hmong immigrants he despises.
Resentful of virtually everything he sees--the drooping
eaves, overgrown lawns and the foreign faces surrounding
him; the aimless gangs of Hmong, Latino and African American
teenagers who all think the neighborhood belongs to them;
the callow strangers his children have grown up to be--Walt
is just waiting out the rest of his life.
Until the night someone tries to steal his Gran Torino.
Still gleaming as it did the day Walt himself helped roll it
off the assembly line decades ago, the Gran Torino brings
his shy teenaged neighbor Thao (Bee Vang) into his life when
Hmong gang-bangers pressure the boy into trying to steal it.
But Walt stands in the way of both the heist and the gang,
making him the reluctant hero of the
neighborhood--especially to Thao's mother and older sister,
Sue (Ahney Her), who insist that Thao work for Walt as a way
to make amends. Though he initially wants nothing to do with
these people, Walt eventually gives in and puts the boy to
work fixing up the neighborhood, setting into motion an
unlikely friendship that will change both their lives.
Through Thao and his family's unrelenting kindness, Walt
eventually comes to understand certain truths about the
people next door. And about himself. These
people--provincial refugees from a cruel past--have more in
common with Walt than he has with his own family, and reveal
to him parts of his soul that have been walled off since the
war...like the Gran Torino preserved in the shadows of his
garage.
© Warner Bros. All
rights reserved
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