I watched the movie Gran Torino starring Clint Eastwood last night for the 1st time. It took me until late the next day to come to the startling conclusion that the end of the movie ---- wait a minute now ---- if you haven’t seen the movie quit reading because the end of the movie is the only really surprising thing in it. ---------------
I’m serious don’t read further till you see it.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Really
Ok. The movie portrays Clint Eastwood portraying a Korean War/torn vet who has managed to live out his later years hating everyone because he killed an enemy Chinese kid. He lives alone, he takes his anger out on anyone who tries to get close. His family doesn’t much like him, only his barber and a few drinking buddies tolerate him.
He is portrayed as the typical clichéd redneck who went to war and did his duty and killed people. The movie carries out the cliché that he is miserable because of it. As he get older his neighborhood deteriates around him and he is the remaining white old guy around, too stubborn to move, or pretty much so. Of course Gooks move in next door and he hates it.
The cliché continues as he seemingly breaks up a fight between a Gook gang and his gook neighbors children. He didn’t break it up for the obvious reasons, the fight moved to his property and he was protecting his own with the shotgun and a wad of chewing tobacco of course.
Throughout the film, the Chinese family is getting through to him and he befriends the boy who acts like a pussy. Through the film he Mans Up the kid and he gains respect and learns to fight for his rights and his own self defense and to protect his family. The PC flags should be going up. Don’t worry the ultimate sacrifice for this way of thinking will be paid in due course.
All is well and good; until finally the boys daughter is beaten to a pulp and I would suppose raped by the gang and the kid is now fully capable and anxious to put to practice what Clint has taught him. It is time to kill the gang. Even the Priest in the story is starting to agree with Clint.
Then, and now again I ask that you not read further if you haven’t seen the movie. Then Clint finds himself in a dilemma. He has become politically correct enough to know that killing is wrong and we should not do it – supposedly for any reason- after all what he did in Korea was so awful. What then should he do? The gang has just machine gunned and shot gunned the neighbor’s house, with blood and guts all around. What should he do? The boy is screaming vengeance.
Well to save the kid and teach some great moral lesson to the rest of the neighborhood, he does the suicide by cop routine. After all it would be more PC to commit suicide than to kill those that have killed his friends and people he cares about and have wrecked his neighborhood. The movie ends with the church scene and the Chinese and the Euro/Caucasions are in the church paying homage to the guy who killed himself for them and the idea of togetherness. The two groups are sitting on opposite sides of the Church. Of course the bad gang members are carted off to jail. So everything is fine and back to normal. How great the next 20 years will be in the hood huh.
I couldn’t get away from the solution to an impossible situation Clint faced. Is it preferable to kill yourself as the only way for the justice system to overcome the PC barrier to justice?
I guess I just don’t get it.
Anybody think of changing the justice system?
There are lots of ways to look at this movie. I see that the star seems quite honest to himself in his name calling and if I knew Chinese, the mother probably was giving back as good as he was dishing out. Could the beautifully PC ending been as good if both were not so honest? Do we not love the wayward son for the coming back? Do we not have to rise to such extremes to see justice prevail when the system will not? Is taking our own life to see justice done the only way left?
Regards, Live Dangerously Be A Conservative
To be fair, here is Ebert on the movie
-----link-----
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20081217/REVIEWS/812179989/1023
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For perhaps a better discussion about from Polywood on PJTV
-----link-----
http://www.pjtv.com/video/Poliwood/Eastwood_rocks_the_PC_boat_in_Gran_Torino/1211/
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