Redeeming the all-American racist

Gran Torino: 116 minutes. Rated: M. Director: Clint Eastwood. Starring: Clint Eastwood, Christopher Carley, Bee Vang, Ahney Her, Brian Haley, John Carroll Lynch

A more or less straight line could be drawn between actor/director Clint Eastwood's starring roles in revisionist western Unforgiven, boxing fable Million Dollar Baby and, now, suburban race drama Gran Torino. This rogues gallery of Eastwood's latter career comprises antiheroes grappling their way to atonement and redemption for sins past.

The most recent is Walt, Gran Torino's all-American neighbourhood racist; a gun-toting, flag-waving Korean War vet, who passes his days guzzling beer on the front porch of his middle American suburban home, spewing xenophobic slander, most notably towards the 'zipperhead' Hmong refugee family that lives next door.

To be fair, Walt appears to dislike everybody, regardless of their skin colour. His adult sons and their families — whose good humour at Walt's incessantly ill manner, even at his own wife's funeral, has worn thin — would pay testament to that.

Same goes for Father Janovich (Carley), the good natured young priest charged by Walt's late wife with trying to redeem the crotchety widower. Walt is resistant to the priest's well-meant platitudes, and dismisses the man as an 'overeducated 27-year-old virgin' who gets his kicks out of promising eternal life to 'superstitious old ladies'.

Unexpectedly, Gran Torino (which takes its title from Walt's most prized possession, the all-American's all-American car) is very funny. Walt's frequent racist remarks are cause for amusement, once you accept that they are the result of his own neurosis. So exaggerated and unfounded are his prejudices that Walt becomes a send-up of himself.

The truth is, with Walt, it's all a matter of knowing how to talk to him. The film juxtaposes the exasperated failure of Walt's son Mitch (Haley) to communicate with the old man, with Walt's good-naturedly abusive relationship with his barber Martin (Lynch). Walt, it seems, respects those who can give as good as they get.

So an unlikely friendship emerges between Walt and two Hmong teenagers who live next door. Sue (Her) quips quick-fire comebacks to any slander Walt can dish out, and wears down his gruff resolve. Her brother, Thao (Vang), grows on him too; soon enough Walt takes the boy under his wing, mentoring him and helping him to find work.

Cultural pressures weigh heavily in the teens' lives. Walt learns that there is a truism among the refugee community, that the women go to 'college' and the men go to jail. Sure enough, Thao is under pressure from a local gang to surrender to the stereotype.

For Thao, the threat of violence is constant. This sets Walt, and the plot of Gran Torino, on a self-consciously messianic course. The film's inevitably tragic finale is not as ambiguous as the ethically hazy climax to Eastwood's previous actor/director vehicle, Million Dollar Baby. Yet, paradoxically, it is less fulfilling in its heavy-handedness.

Walt's redemption, after all, takes place in the everyday course of his life: his grudging, growing respect for the priest; his bond with Sue and Thao, and his understanding of the cultural and social factors bearing on their lives; his realisation that he is as alien to his neighbours, as they are to him — a trite lesson, but warmly and humorously evoked by the film. These resonate more loudly than any overwrought messianic symbolism.