IMAGINE an aged Dirty Harry squinting, waving his .44 Magnum at a bunch of kids and yelling “Get off my lawn!” That’s a pretty good idea of Clint Eastwood’s hugely entertaining indie-style dramedy “Gran Torino.”
No, Eastwood, at the absolute top of his game as an actor, isn’t playing his most iconic character again. But there’s more Harry than Archie Bunker in Walt Kowalski, a misanthropic and racist retired Ford worker.
Newly widowed, Walt disdains his two “spoiled” sons, who drive foreign cars, and their families. He repeatedly turns away overtures from Father Janovich (Christopher Carley), a concerned priest he ridicules as a “27-year-old virgin.”
Walt, a Korean War veteran, reserves special contempt for the Hmong family next door and all of the Asian-Americans who dominate his longtime Detroit neighborhood.
Eastwood skillfully comes within millimeters of self-parody as the beer-drinking Walt, who in the astute script by newcomer Nick Schenk serves as a pointed commentary on Dirty Harry Callahan.
It’s also a terrific, career-capping role for Eastwood, who claims he’s now retired as an actor. He shows off his comic chops more fully than in any film since “Bronco Billy” more than a quarter-century ago.
It’s not all laughs, of course, and a coughing fit in the very first scene telegraphs that Walt may not have forever to come to terms with his personal demons.
The vehicle for his redemption is a bunch of Hmong gangbangers. When they make the mistake of forcing Walt’s teenage next-door neighbor Thao (Bee Vang) to steal Walt’s beloved 1972 mint-condition Gran Torino, the old man pulls out his rifle and other artillery and faces down the intruders.
This turns grumpy old Walt, much to his annoyance, into a most unlikely neighborhood hero. And he’s even more surprised to find he has more in common with Thao and his sister Sue (Ahney Her) than his own kin.
Walt even helps Thao get a job – although first Walt has to “man him up” in the funniest scene by teaching the teenager to trade racist epithets with Walt’s barber pal Martin (John Carroll Lynch).
Quickly shot over the past summer, “Gran Torino” is so loose-limbed it could easily be mistaken for a newcomer’s Sundance Film Festival entry rather than the year’s second release (after the big-budget “Changeling”) from a 78-year-old icon who’s been directing movies since 1971.
I mean that as the very highest compliment. Eastwood obviously put a lot of effort into working as a director with the Hmong, none of whom are professional actors.
It pays off with a very funny and touching movie that delivers its message of tolerance with a most agreeable light hand.
GRAN TORINO Magnum farce. In English and Hmong with English subtitles. Running time: 116 minutes. Rated R (profanity and racist epithets, violence). At the Empire, the Lincoln Square, the Union Square.