He's 'that guy'

Just seven weeks after “Changeling,” Clint Eastwood is releasing his second directorial outing of the year. “Gran Torino” is, in tone and style, about as far from its predecessor as you can get: the historical basis of “Changeling,” its lovingly recreated period look and its dramatic star turn from Angelina Jolie all scream Oscar-bait. While “Gran Torino” is not without serious aspects, it feels far more “commercial” than that film and such Eastwood award-winners as “Bird,” “Unforgiven,” “Mystic River” and “Million Dollar Baby.” 

Despite this — or perhaps because of it — it’s arguably a better film than “Changeling”; certainly it’s a film with more obvious pleasures. Not the least of these, of course, is the casting of its star — that same Clint Eastwood, the Man with a Very Well-Known Name — in his first onscreen appearance in four years.

We meet Walter Kowalski (Eastwood), a retired Detroit auto worker, at his wife’s funeral. He’s a gruff, forbidding old geezer, deeply offended by the disrespectful way his granddaughter behaves at the event. It’s immediately clear that his late wife was the warm, humanizing influence that kept the surly Walter just this side of being rude and antisocial all these years.

She was also a good deal more devoutly Catholic than Walter; and she made the parish’s young priest (Christopher Carley, looking like a very, very young Spencer Tracy) promise to get Walter into the confession booth — something Walter will not bend to, regardless of his beloved’s wishes.

Among Walter’s less endearing traits is his unabashed racism. He’s not very happy that the neighborhood he’s lived in for decades has been overrun almost entirely by “gooks” and “chinks.” One day, Thao (Bee Vang), a Hmong (an Asian ethnic group from the mountainous areas of southeast Asia) teenager whose family has moved in next door, is being bullied by local Asian-American gangbangers. Walter looks on with nothing more than disapproval and mild interest ... until the fight spills over onto his lawn, and out comes his shotgun and the kind of threatening grimace that Eastwood characters have employed for decades.

The rest of the neighborhood’s old-school Asians insist on thanking Walter with endless gifts of food and flowers. He doesn’t want any of it, but he’s more comfortable and effective going up against toughs than trying to fend off aging immigrant women.
When he catches Thao trying to steal — at the insistence of the gang — his prize possession, a perfectly maintained Gran Torino, Thao’s family insists that the boy work for Walter to repent for the shame he has brought them. Walter really has no interest in having anything to do with Thao — or with having his solitude interrupted by anyone, Asian, black or Anglo — but once again, they give him no option. In particular, he can’t win an argument against Thao’s smart, no-nonsense sister Sue (Ahney Her), whom he has already come to respect.

Unsurprisingly, the dramatic arc of the story involves Walter getting so involved with Thao, Sue and their family that he has to give up all but the most superficial aspects of his bigotry. (He and his longtime barber still banter about chinks, dagos and Polacks; in the film’s view, as long as they are equal-opportunity racists and make a point of including their own ethnic groups, it’s all a stylistic ritual of male bonding.) And, as we move into the final act, he is forced to take a strong stand against the gang members as their assaults on the family grow more violent.

On the Eastwood seriousness scale, “Gran Torino” sits closest to “Honkytonk Man” or “Bronco Billy”; it deals with issues without ever feeling self-consciously “deep-dish” (except for one regrettable shot near the end, the filmmaker’s single lapse of judgment here).

One of its great pleasures is giving Eastwood a chance to be funnier than he’s been in a long time. There are numerous close-ups of Walter scowling, while his sub-vocalized growl fills the sound track. So serious has Eastwood’s work been in recent years that it’s easy to forget just how funny he can be, particularly when he’s spinning the humor off of his very well-defined “tough guy” persona.

And, though perhaps it’s tacky to mention this, Clint is 78 freakin’ years old. And, with “Gran Torino,” he sets one record and edges toward a second.

First, no other action icon has remained believably tough well into his 70s. The most obvious comparison, John Wayne, was 69 in his last film and, while still convincingly tough, didn’t seem fit enough to back up the attitude. Sean Connery is Eastwood’s age, but has been M.I.A. for five years. Not only can Eastwood still sound intimidating as he utters raspy lines like “Ever notice how you come across somebody every once in a while who you shouldn’t have fucked with? Well, I’m that guy,” he also looks strong enough to take on the gang of thugs he’s threatening.

Second, among major American directors, who has maintained quality while nearing 80? Hitchcock was 73 when he made his last good film; Billy Wilder was 72. A lot of the greats either don’t live that long or have been badly affected by age. Only John Huston made a really good film at a more advanced age — “Prizzi’s Honor,” when he was 79. (Don’t ask me about his overrated final project, “The Dead.”) And Clint looks hale enough to surpass that.

Coincidentally, Charles Chaplin was 78 when he made his last film, but that was “The Countess from Hong Kong,” almost universally regarded as his worst feature. I’m not sure whether anyone else has ever found grounds for comparing Eastwood and Charlie Chaplin, but the career similarities are there. Both are actors who exploited personas that made them great international stars and who then took charge of their fortunes and segued into directing. Like Eastwood, Chaplin knew how to use his screen image better than anyone else. And has there been any other major figure to direct, star in and compose the music for his own movies?

With time, both started casting themselves against the image: Eastwood — most notably in “Tightrope” and “Unforgiven” — cast moral shadows on his persona. Chaplin, in “The Great Dictator,” played characters modeled after both his Little Tramp and Hitler. He finally abandoned the Tramp altogether to play a serial killer in his 1947 “Monsieur Verdoux,” which is being revived in a new print Friday at the Nuart.

A few words on that: After 35 years as a clerk, Henri Verdoux is laid off as the world economy begins to teeter. He is dedicated to providing a good life for his wheelchair-bound wife and his young son. Bereft of other skills, he takes to marrying women all over France and charming them out of their money. When necessary — as when his multiple identities start to bump up against each other — he does away with them. Challenged to defend himself, he observes that mass murder is practiced every day by governments and international business. How is he any worse than they are?

In Chaplin’s filmography, “Verdoux” sits uncomfortably between a masterpiece (“The Great Dictator”) and a flawed but far more affecting work (“Limelight”). While it has moments of sparkling dialogue — “You seem to have lost your zest for bitterness,” a young woman says to him near the end — it is, not surprisingly, the visual humor that carries the movie. As both performer and filmmaker, Chaplin was always most fluent in the language of silent film.