Clint Eastwood knows how to play it clever. With his new movie, “Gran Torino,” the filmmaker shrewdly permits himself to deliver an incredible performance as the lead character in the piece, urging the supporting cast to give their best so as to outshine the acting of a true veteran.

 

Stern, dour, with his voice trimmed down to a croaky rumble by drinks of whiskey and cigarettes, Walt Kowalski (Clint Eastwood) is a Korean War vet whose wife has just died and one of the few white city dwellers remaining in a mounting neighborhood of Hmong immigrants. Walt Kowalski looks down on the new citizens and treats them with diatribe and criticism dating from a different era. In addition, he does not have much admiration for anyone else surrounding him either, whether it’s the solemn young Catholic priest who incessantly strives to shed the light of redemption on him or his own adult children and their expressionless, flawed kids.

 

Walt finds pleasure in sitting on his shipshape veranda accompanied by his loyal Lab and knocking back a couple of beers while admiring his affectionately reconditioned 1972 Gran Torino, which lingers in the driveway as an unspoiled mark of better times, when he worked at the Ford factory, his wife was waiting home for him and white men bumped into him everywhere.

 

However, Walt’s peaceful life is suddenly bothered by Thao (Bee Vang), who tries to steal his beloved vehicle. Walt gradually becomes friendly with the Hmong family and learns more about their culture and lifestyle, thus estranging his racist beliefs and offering a grand lesson during less grand times.