Movies dealing with racism navigate tricky territory, and Gran Torino shows just how tricky it can be.  Director/star Clint Eastwood plays Walt Kowalski, a Korean War vet who lives in a neighborhood increasingly taken over by the Asian-American Hmong community. He's proud yet grumpy, grouchy, and estranged from his sons and their families. Sitting on his porch, his firearms are never far away, and neither is his crazy-old-man scowl.

He's also an unabashed bigot... or is he? Racial slurs come out of his mouth more often than the chewing tobacco he spits, but as we get to know him we see that most of his cursing comes more from a male defense mechanism than from actual hate. Or maybe he did have hate in his blood, but now he's getting soft. After he chases away some Hmong gangsters from his Hmong neighbors (an unintentional good deed, since all he wanted was for them to get off his lawn), they take to him -- the teenage daughter Sue (Ahney Her) invites him to get to know them more, and the teenage son Thao (Bee Vang), who earlier tried to steal his Gran Torino, is offered up to work for him in order to pay off his delinquency debt.

Well, wouldn't you know it, the old man actually learns to get along with his neighbors and creates some bonds with them. But here's where things get a little wobbly. A lot of the culture clash, including the racial insults coming from all sides of the neighborhood -- from Walt, from his neighbors, and from the various other ethnic groups in the community -- is played up for comedy here. The racism becomes funny because the more Walt ignorantly hurls slurs around, the more ridiculous he appears to be. But it's par for the course for Walt because it's how he sees the world, and he's even learned to make this aspect of his life normal in his interactions. For instance, his visits to the barber become a game of ethnic one-upmanship that both sides seem to find entertaining. As Walt later explains, this is how "men talk."

Throwing such bad behavior out in the open -- making it funny and essentially harmless -- serves to dampen the impact of the epithets, an interesting approach, for it doesn't necessarily condemn outward "racism" more than it tempers its existence as a fact of life that can be dealt with in a humorous yet honest way. In other words, if you don't mean it personally, no offense taken. Or, perhaps more precisely, it's only ignorance if you're truly close-minded, and, humanist that Eastwood is, Walt proves not to be close-minded. Once he gets to know his neighbors, he becomes closer to them than his own family. Once he gets to know Thao, he admonishes him for not being manly more than he cares he's Asian; actually, he calls him "zipperhead" so much it becomes a term of endearment.  

Yes, it's tricky territory, but surprisingly the whole thing comes off as disarming. Gran Torino also walks the tightrope on its "comedy" -- it feels written as if it's intentional, but acted as if it's unintentional. This should raise a few eyebrows while giving us quite a bit to chew on, but the movie runs into bigger problems with its more external storyline, wherein Walt tries to protect his newfound friends from the annoying ever-present gang tormenting Thao. It contains a redemption arc dealing with Walt's buried guilt from the killings he had to commit in Korea and culminates with a move effectively apologizing for any promotion Eastwood's ever done for vigilantism in any of his older action movies. In order for this part of the story to occur, obvious bad things have to happen first, and the whole thing detracts from the more interesting and significant thread about getting to know thy neighbor.

Humor gets traded for old-fashioned melodrama, and the contrivances of the script seep through the cracks -- we see the goal, the agenda of the movie. Supporting cast members become devices, and the story proves not to be about Walt and them -- but only about him. Eastwood, after all, is continuing to riff on his tough guy movie persona, with Gran Torino serving as the latest road to understanding how his persona and his career have impacted movie mythology. However, I was much more interested in Eastwood broaching the subject of America's continuing acceptance of its multi-colored identity. If Gran Torino settled its focus on that, a lot more lovely grey could've been expressed over the splotches of black and white.

(Released by Warner Bros. and rated "R" for language throughout, and some violence.)

Review also posted at www.windowtothemovies.com