MIT: Gran Torino

Rating: 9 out of 10 stars

This was vintage Clint Eastwood and anyone who appreciates the body of work of Clint Eastwood will especially love this film.

It was reminiscent of Unforgiven in several ways. The entire movie set Clint Eastwood up as a gruff, uncaring individual who is a hardened killer (in this case, he was in the Korean War) who warms up over the course of the film. The ending is the kind of Unforgiven-esque poetic character change that make Eastwood as relevant in modern film as he is. Eastwood's performance isn't strong enough, imo, to warrant any sort of award. It's not the type of movie that gets, or really deserves, a best picture nomination (it does lack an Unforgiven, Mystic River, Million Dollar Baby gravitas during the entire movie). I doubt the song Gran Torino stands a chance against Peter Gabriel (Wall-E) and Bruce Springsteen (The Wrestler) so Gran Torino may go largely awardless but it is worth seeing for it's character tale and interesting story.