Even though it’s the holiday season and thus time for some heart warming movies about Santa, his elves and the joy they bring to children all around the world, Clint Eastwood decided to offer everybody a lesson as a Christmas gift. The valuable lesson of how a good movie is made, exquisitely wrapped in his 2008 production “Gran Torino.”

No Santa Claus, no toy factory, no red-nosed rein deers, no bells and whistles, only an elderly racist man who wants to spend his golden years in peace.

Widower Walt Kowalski, portrayed by Clint Eastwood himself, loves only three things in this world, his yellow Labrador, Daisy, his lawn and his '72 Ford, which nobody should dare even touch, if in their right mind.

Nevertheless, threatened by a local Detroit gang, Kowalski’s next-door neighbors’ son Thao tries to steal the former’s cherry 1972 Gran Torino, an attempt that not only fails, but it also almost causes the teen thief to lose his life to the car’s armed owner.

As punishment, Thao, a member of the Hmong community, is forced by his family to work for Walt, who never misses a chance to utter really foul words about any ethnic or racial group he can think of.

Little by little, the arrangement that displeased both men turns into a mentor-disciple relationship, Kowalski taking up the role of a protector and a father figure for the troubled teenager.

Moving from comedy to drama and afterwards to downright tragedy, „Gran Torino” is a story about the American nation itself, drained of its force to produce anything worthwhile, caught amidst a standstill it cannot overcome.