Fun Stuff > ENJOY
Racist old man sits on porch, scowls at children
WriterofAllWrongs:
oh army of darkness yessss
Well alright man, that's fair enough I suppose, but it really does put a really comedic take on his grizzled scowling on-screen persona. Maybe not an outright parody, but he definitely pokes a bit of fun at himself. Don't have to get all up in arms about the film. It's a bad film because it's so predictable and sort of just the sort of film you'd expect a man who starred in numerous westerns to make about the youth of today, but it's great because it can avoid all the stigma of those sorts of films and the predictability is endearing.
Also, the cast is predominately Hmong folks who had never acted before, so it's understandable that they would be so awful.
Guido Sarducci:
--- Quote from: Ikrik on 19 Jan 2009, 11:19 ---Watched it again last night and I've noticed something. The supporting cast (with a few possible exceptions) are absolutely terrible. Thao is the absolute worst offender and the priest and Clint's family being the only exceptions. Sue and Thao stuttered a bunch of times and just seemed like they were just picked right off the street. I'm sure they probably did pretty well in auditions or whatever...but wow, did their performance leave a lot to be desired. I don't blame them...trying to act next to Clint Eastwood would give me a heart attack.
-->WriterofAllWrongs
You want a really great "bad" movie....go watch Army of Darkness, hell..watch almost any Bruce Campbell movies. You want to describe Gran Torino as a great bad movie? Clint Eastwood is playing the persona he's played in every movie he's ever played in. This time he's a bitter, racist old man. When did he ever go on about the good ol days? If anything he talked about piling bodies in Korea. Basically paroides Clint Eastwood? Umm, no. He directed and produced the film, there is no parody.
--- End quote ---
Most of the Hmong were camera virgins, and, yeah they were basically picked off the street. Despite the common perception, your average joe really can't act. Sue and Thao were both new to acting so you aren't going to get Academy Award performances. I think the point of choosing Hmong was to make them somewhat stiff on camera. They've been somewhat isolated by society because they are frankly somewhat strange to a more modern culture (not strange in fact, just so out of the norm that they end up isolated...) Using them also gives Eastwood an opportunity to highlight just how mean and downright weird Walt is--the only people willing or desperate enough to live next to him are outsiders themselves.
I know what it is like to come home angry at the world, and sort of stuck in time like a fly in amber. I think the ending was perfect, actually. Piling bodies leaves you (if you are sane) stuck with the feeling when you come home that you are a monster, can't fit in and can't be forgiven for what you've done. You wait for (and sometimes see) that look in your wife's face that says she's deeply afraid of you and doesn't know how to deal with it any more than you do. Her fear confirms what you think about yourself. It's too hard for you to process, and so you try to hide from it--by isolating yourself. One good way of doing that is to drive everyone off--like your family so you won't hurt them. Racism is a good way to do that. I got the impression that he was avoiding confession out of fear that God would refuse him. Walt was able to find a measure of redemption in the end, and in a way that I'm sure he welcomed. Good movie, and not anything like anything else he's done, IMO.
Ikrik:
Sorry I got riled up, I just REALLY loved this film. There are a few films I get really defensive of and this happens to be one of them.
TheFuriousWombat:
POTENTIAL SPOILER(S) OF SORTS WITHIN:
Saw it this afternoon. It ultimately left me a little cold. I remember thinking, at the end, "man, the dog's going to miss him" and that made me sadder than anything else. Somehow the ending was just too predictable and, great as Clint was, the whole rest of the cast (including the priest, I think) were merely OK at best and downright awful at worst. It got to the point, at times, where it was distracting and dragged down potentially powerful or intense scenes. The scene with the girl and that wigger being accosted by those guys on the corner while Clint watches from his car and the scene where Clint tricks Thao and locks him in the basement, going to confront the gang on his own, are definitely examples of this. I thought a lot of the dialog was not only poorly acted but also poorly written at several moments. Even Clint's. The whole tough guy thing was, I think, a little overplayed but I place the blame for that solely on the screen writer since it was all in the dialog. Still, Eastwood was pretty brilliant throughout, even though I have a bit of a hard time finding his rather abrupt transformation believable. I was honestly hoping to love this and ultimately my reaction to it was far more lukewarm.
Also, a rather frightening experience: as the credits began to role, some guy sitting by himself in the top left corner of the theater started laughing hysterically. Like...in a nearly deranged manner. He was laughing so hard he was choking at a couple points. I left the theater and made a quick phone call. The guy walked past, still laughing just as hard. This perplexed and, to be honest, sort of terrified me. I mean, I know Clint Eastwood should never sing. I get that. But I'm not sure if it warrants a deranged reaction.
Inlander:
Just saw this tonight. I really liked it, and I'm a bit amazed (though perhaps not surprised) by some of the reactions in this thread. Perhaps it's because I'm a bit older than a lot of the people here, but I find films about "badass killing-machine one-man-armies" in which the bad guys "get what's coming to them" at the end of the film to be pretty much utterly reprehensible. So I was really pleased with the way this film panned out, even if the ending was a bit sentimental and unbelievable (touch too much Walt Kowalski as Jesus metaphor in there for my liking). Clint Eastwood's become one of the most compassionate film-makers out there, and this film fits right in there with his recent work. In the end the only really duff notes in the film for me were the utterly cliched (though fortunately little-seen) character of the granddaughter, especially in her last scene, and that dreadful song over the end credits.
There was a really good article in the Guardian (as usual) last month about this film, but somebody seems to have forgotten to put it up properly on their website. Here's the link, keep checking it out in case they fix it: http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2008/dec/19/clint-eastwood-gran-torino-dirty-harry.
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