Gran Torino

If you're unfamiliar, Gran Torino is the new Clint Eastwood movie claimed as "vintage Eastwood." In the commercials, Eastwood growls the phrase "Get off my lawn." The movie may seem like another Dirty Harry or something like that by the way the commercials run, but it's really not very close.

Eastwood plays an elderly character who is extremely blunt and abrasive to everyone around him, including his neighbors, all of which are of several different ethnicities from himself. He is a Vietnam vet dealing with some issues, one being that his recently deceased wife asking a young priest to get a confession out of him. And some trouble arises when a local gang is trying to recruit his next-door neighbor.

The movie is full of racial slurs, but in a healthy way. Yes. A healthy way. Really very funny cultural conflicts arise when he finds himself at a party where he is the only white guy in the room. And this movie is full of spiritual content, which really makes it very three dimensional. It's a really different role for Eastwood, and he does such a great job that the movie was very fun to watch the entire time. There's racial issues, spiritual issues, and basic human issues of dealing with the past. This movie has great humorous parts, and great serious parts, all in the same step. This is a movie I was expecting mild entertainment from and instead was blown away. Finally, 2008 has some more real Academy Award material with some of the movies that came out at the end of the year. Great stuff.