Gran Torino

Clint Eastwood, back when I was six and he was still god of westerns and stuff, was my hero. He could not be defeated; he was awesome.

After I grew out of westerns, I never paid much attention to anything else he did, mostly because he didn't do too many things I thought I'd like. And plus, he's old now. Really old.

It was my mom's fault that I got out to see Gran Torino, and Eastwood growls just as well as he did twenty years ago.

Gran Torino is amazingly a story about love, the kind of love that would make a man give up his life for his friend. Eastwood plays Walt, a grieving, racist widower intent on cutting himself off from his priest and his Hmung neighbors. His growls say, I don't like you, get out of my face, and get off my lawn.

Though laced with profanities, the movie does an amazing job with touchy subjects like racism, stereotypical gangs - one Hmung girl told Walt "The girls go to college, the boys go to jail." - and the reality of life: the "happy ending" is less than such.