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.
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.Why, if you don't mind me asking? And your link is already dead, goes to the page, but there is nothing where the story should be. Did have a bit on how some dumbass that got put in charge decided to ban a poster for WANTED because it "glamourized gun violence".
It's the Guardian, so the link's not dead, it's just borked. They'll fix it up eventually. They always do. Their website is pretty amazingly comprehensive - you can still read articles from the 90s there, for gods' sake!I've never been on their site before, so I wouldn't know. I just figured it was dead because it wasn't working right.
As for the other bit, I just find the whole culture of violence in which it's assumed that because someone's the bad guy their life is disposable to be absolutely disgusting. It's the kind of thing we see over and over again in Hollywood - see Die Hard, for instance, or that horrible end to Bad Boys where they try to have their cake and eat it too ("You can't kill the bad guy! That's wrong! LOOK OUT, HE'S GOT A GUN! BLAM! Phew, that was close." A nice counterpoint to this was Hot Fuzz, which was incredibly violent without ever becoming vengeful. So I really appreciated the fact that Gran Torino managed to resolve itself in a different way - and in fact the whole point of the movie seemed to be that there is a different way to resolve things other than going on a killing spree - even if it was rather melodramatic.So you'd rather see someone have to sacrifice themselves to get the bad guys put away, likely not even for life, with their testimony of his previous threats and violence? I'd much prefer to see them get shot, though I wouldn't want to see it presented as wonderful and heroic (though in my opinion, it would be less than they deserved. Not the place to discuss that, though). The way that I think Unforgiven presented it.
So you'd rather see someone have to sacrifice themselves to get the bad guys put away, likely not even for life, with their testimony of his previous threats and violence?