Evaluation : Gran Torino Essays Examples

The movie “Gran Torino” is a captivating drama directed by Clint Eastwood. The movie portrays broad-mindedness, hopefulness, sacrifice and cultural differences in a new perspective. Racism is directly attacked in the movie and violence has been unsympathetically abhorred. The movie succeeded in getting praises and acclamations from audiences and critics. This paper intends to discuss the movie, “Gran Torino” along with presenting an evaluation analysis of the movie.
The story is well-written and revolves around Walt Kowalski who is a retired man and a veteran of the Korean War. Director and producer Clint Eastwood has acted marvelously in the role of Walt Kowalski. Kowalski is a narrow-minded man who is prejudiced against everyone including his neighbors. He is a loner who has very few friends and has no affection with even his two sons. Kowalski’s best companion is his dog who lives in with him.
Kowalski’s neighborhood was dominated by the Hmong immigrants and south-east Asian people. Some of these people operate a gang and these people are involved in various crimes. Kowalski believes that these people are responsible for increased incidents of theft in the neighborhood. Kowalski has a feeling of abhorrence towards these people. One of members of Hmong families tries to steal Kowalski’s 1972 Gran Torino but he is caught red handed by Kowalski. He points his assault rifle at the thief and film takes a turn from hereon. The film is a comedy and turns into a drama and tragedy as story develops ahead.
The portrayal of immigrants’ life and gang operations is very realistic. Racial discriminations and disrespect of elders by youngsters is also described nicely. Clintwood is very skilled in the art of creating drama. The way, Eastwood has knitted incidents and characters, is very striking and appeals audiences. His own role is so powerful that he appears driving the story through his stereotypical stoutness. The movie is a perfect blend of comedy, drama, action and tragedy.
Major themes covered under the movie are racism, forgiveness, disrespect shown by youngsters towards old people, and gangs. All these elements are clearly visible through the movie. The director effectively displayed how people changed over a period of time and under different circumstances, especially Kowalski. The movie did a great job is displaying race issue to the public while maintaining no biasness towards any race. The movie talks about the requirements of understanding, clear communication, and the importance of values in a culture driven by the youth. The movie shows how a person with prejudice and anger changed in to a soft person. The movie also shows that how America society is changing and neighborhood is evolving. People with conservative mindset are also accepting the reality of this contemporary society and changing themselves for the better future of the society. Kowalski also changed his nature and becomes more open towards different races. Overall the movie can be an eye opening experience for few viewers. It is important that viewer analyze both sides covered in the movie in order to understand the real message of the movie.
Having observed an overview and succinct analysis of the abovementioned subject, this paper concludes that the movie, “Gran Torino” is a balanced portrayal of racial discriminations, violence and conflict of our society. Eastwood has delivered a nice movie that fulfils the expectations of audiences and also acclaimed by critics.