Gran Torino is a film that remains constantly open to interpretation. For the Eastwood faithful there is the story of a reluctant hero, Walt Kowalski, and his gradual involvement in the lives of his new Asian American neighbors. The role seems tailor made for the man who played Dirty Harry and the bitter Harry Dunn of Million Dollar Baby (2004). Angry at the world, withdrawn and grieving alone for his wife, Walt has to be worn down before engaging in even a polite greeting that doesn't include “zipperhead” but his newfound tolerance and eventual sacrifice seem to point toward a heroic enlightenment.
Above and beyond this unexceptional reworking of an old paradigm, however, lurk a series of questions about the nature of heroism, the value of redemption, and the cultural meaning of an image like Clint Eastwood the Movie Star in morally ambiguous times.
Hero or Antihero?
Despite his status as an action and Western icon, it is worth asking just how much of a true hero Eastwood ever really was. Emerging through his cowboy persona in the spaghetti Westerns of Sergio Leone, Eastwood was initially sold as a different sort of protagonist, virtuous to be sure, but also flawed and stubbornly demanding to do things his own way. This brand of individualism carried over to the Dirty Harry franchise where Eastwood created the archetypal bad cop, getting the job done by working on—and sometimes transgressing—the fringes of decency.
Eventually Eastwood took on even more complex roles, making use of his age and track record to surprise audiences with characters living out the rest of their lives after a career of distributing reckless justice. With Unforgiven (1992) and Blood Work (2002) he sought the closure that happy endings seldom require while also asserting a pacifist agenda and recontextualizing the violence that drew a generation of American men to his earlier films.
Synthesis: Gran Torino
As Walt Kowalski, Eastwood performs enough contemptible acts to dissuade delusions of heroism in all but his most ardent admirers. Walt is a clear-cut racist, comfortable in his bigotry which extends to a sort of mild misogyny and takes the form of playful banter with other, like-minded all-American masculinists. He is hypocritical, decrying the rise of gang violence in his once quiet neighborhood yet bursting out the front door with a loaded shotgun when the neighbors trespass on his lawn. (The drumroll that accompanies his call to action is at first stirring, but by the third time we hear it clearly an ironic commentary from the soundtrack.)
These decidedly unheroic traits are largely revealed as manifestations of insecurity from a dark past, but this explanation does little to excuse them. Rather, it leads up to the ultimate realization that 21st century America has little place for this particular sort of bygone antihero, leading Walt to the sad conclusion about how to save himself and his friends given the impossibility of redemption. In this sense Walt is Eastwood's first classically tragic hero, sheltered by none of the conventions of genre that make Unforgiven so much easier to accept at face value.
Didacticism is thankfully lacking in Gran Torino, and so no valid moral interpretation can claim authority. Owing to Eastwood's cinematic legacy, the film is about the expectations of its audience as much as characters and events. At the very least, Eastwood asks viewers to consider the differences between the hero we might want and the reality we sometimes get.
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