This quick list was born out of an email conversation I’ve been having today. If someone had me at gunpoint and I had to name the characters who I think are the all-time coolest, this is what would happen. I’m not sure why anyone would need to pull a gun on me to get such a list, since I’d obviously provide it for free… but the point is: This list might have been a little different with more time to reflect on it, but I kind of like the immediacy of such a thing. There’s an honesty to it. When I’m asked what I think is cool, this is what’s at the tip of the tongue of my brain.
In other words, don’t waste your time arguing with it. Let’s be friends. But I WOULD love to hear your own favorites, so feel free to shoot me your own top 10!
And we’re back! Ready for round two. Inspired again by my friend-in-movies at Rupert Pupkin Speaks, I’m re-presenting and reshuffling my top fifty movies of all time. “Reshuffling” sounds a little more extreme than what I’ve done here — most of the titles remain the same, and the order isn’t much different. But there’s a fair amount of new blood, and I’ve updated the links to any movies I’ve written about at length (those are bolded in red.)
This list is absolutely subject to change, so keep watching this space, but while you’re at it, don’t forget to keep watching the skies.
Masterpiece. Masterpiece. Masterpiece. Masterpiece. I almost don’t want to write about Unforgiven, not because it’s been written about to death but because I could write about it all day (and you’ve seen the length of some of the articles I write, so you can believe me.) It’s one of my top five favorite movies, it is among the zeniths of arguably the greatest career in American movies, and it has what is in my opinion one of the greatest scripts ever brought to screen.
The truth is that almost anybody could have made a good movie with the script (originally titled ”The Cut-Whore Killings”) by David Webb Peoples, but of course Clint was the best man for the job, because he brought the full weight of his literally-legendary cinematic persona to it. He also brought out the humor in it, which is something I notice that people scarcely mention about Unforgiven. Clint’s humor is such a part of his films. Clint’s brand of humor is a light touch – gentle and breezy, so subtle you could miss it sometimes. Why would you ever think that the guy with that squinty glare was joking? It’s easy to overlook. But you’d never care about William Munny’s friendship with Ned Logan, and you’d never feel the way you do about what happens to Ned and what Will does about it, if you didn’t have those light moments of humor that pass like gusts throughout the early going.
Unforgiven showcases what is maybe Clint’s greatest acting performance, as understated as ever but with vast reserves of rage and loss just beneath the surface. Every other actor in the movie rises to that level — particularly Gene Hackman, who won the Academy Award for his performance as the charmingly down-home yet viciously despotic Little Bill Daggett. Morgan Freeman is wonderful as always as William Munny’s trusted friend, Ned Logan, bringing a needed warmth to the movie. I’ve read examinations of Unforgiven that accuse the film of dodging the issue of race in the old West, since the presence of Morgan Freeman automatically makes it pertinent. I don’t buy those critiques. Ned’s eventual fate has everything to do with race, whether or not it was originally written that way, and despite the fact that the matter of race is never overtly stated or discussed. Unforgiven chooses to portray the matter using the most subtle method possible — with casting. What happens to Ned would be horrible if it happened to anyone. But when it happens to Morgan Freeman, there is a historic context that doesn’t need to be spoken.
Everything about Unforgiven evinces this theme, which I personally find so appealing as a mission statement: Emotional power can still be derived from subtety and understatement. Eastwood’s insistence on choosing and staying loyal to like-minded collaborators has everything to do with the lasting impact that is taken away from every viewing of Unforgiven. The score by jazz composer Lennie Niehaus is spare but unforgettable. The production design by Eastwood’s longtime collaborator Henry Bumstead is absorbing and utterly, invisibly convincing. The most invisible cinematic art of all is editing, and the work done on this film by editor Joel Cox should not be overlooked. (And it wasn’t, by the Academy Awards that year.)
And then there’s Jack Green’s cinematography in Unforgiven – it’s probably my favorite look of any movie ever. I wish that every movie looked like Unforgiven, but then I guess they wouldn’t be Unforgiven. It’s an important thing to talk about, how a movie looks. So many people write about movies, but never talk about what they look like. They talk about the script, which you can’t see, but not the photography, which you can. They talk about the most obvious virtues, like actors and their appearances, but not the next most obvious, and that’s the reason why stars look as good as they do. Movies are moving pictures, that’s what they are. Few pictures move me like Unforgiven, and yeah, in this case I know for a fact it’s because of how good the script is, and how good the actors are, but I also know that it has plenty to do with how it looks. And that’s a credit to Jack Green. For his work alone, Unforgiven demands to be looked at on as big a screen as possible.
From here on out, I’m just going to refer to Lockout by my preferred title of Space Prison, if you don’t mind too much. Lockout sounds like a GI Joe code name, and a movie as brutishly high-concept as this one demands to be named as on-the-snout as possible.
I loved it, by the way. I know it can get confusing, but when I call a movie “stupid” it’s not always a putdown (or a lockout.). In local parlance here in the multiplexes of New York City, to exclaim “Yo that shit is stupid, son!” does indeed imply that a movie has some inherent stupidity, which Space Prison has in abundance, but it also connotes that said stupidity is very enjoyable, which Space Prison also is.
Space Prison was co-written and directed by the team of Saint + Mather, otherwise known as the Irish filmmakers Stephen Saint-Leger and James Mather, who got hired off the strength of their pretty cool short film, Prey Alone.
The man who hired them, basically, was Luc Besson, the writer-director who has made action films as influential as La Femme Nikita and Léon (The Professional) but has had an even more prolific career as a producer of films of drastically varying quality, including Taken, Columbiana, the District 13 movies, the Transporter movies, and Tommy Lee Jones’ The Three Burials Of Melquiades Estrada. (!!!) Here Besson wrote the script with Saint + Mather based on his original idea, which, as you can tell from the title I am insisting on, Space Prison, is about a space prison. The idea is that in the near future, the nation’s worst criminals are put into cryo-sleep and stored about a facility which orbits the Earth. When they get woken up and abduct a member of the Presidential family, the last-ditch effort of the authorities in charge is to send in a lone man, a specialist, to get in and get out.
Call it Star Wars meets HBO’s Oz. Call it Demolition Man meets Escape From New York, In Space. Just don’t call it late for dinner. This movie is hungry and what it likes best to eat is scenery. In a lighter-hearted turn than he usually gets to take, Guy Pearce (LA Confidential, Memento, The Proposition) is a lot of fun as a cantankerous rogue named Snow, which I think is the Eskimo word for “Snake Plisskin.” Snow is a captive of the future government, wrongfully imprisoned, about to be shipped off-planet to a state-of-the-art jail in Earth’s orbit. You can tell he doesn’t play by the rules because he wears a T-shirt that reads “Warning: Offensive” and he sneers a lot.
Not a lot of movie action heroes would be caught dead wearing a novelty T-shirt, but I guess on the sliding scale of novelty T-shirts, “Warning: Offensive” is a touch witter than “I’m With Stupid” and a touch classier than “I Fucked Your Girlfriend.”
So this guy Snow is introduced as he’s being beat up by police-state thugs. That’s the title sequence, for the record. Every time Snow takes a punch, his head drops out of frame, and then another screen credit comes up. How can you not immediately warm up to a movie that starts that way?
Elsewhere, while Snow is taking his lumps, the plot starts happening. The President’s daughter (Maggie Grace from Taken) is making a standard publicity visit to the Space Prison. When one escapes and frees the others and she’s taken hostage by armies of belligerent convicts, that’s when her dad, Liam Neeson, springs into action. He has a very particular set of skills, skills he has acquired over a very long career…
…Sorry, wrong Luc-Besson-produced movie.
No, instead, Snow’s adversary, Langral, agrees to send Snow on a suicide mission to infiltrate the Space Prison as the inmate he was slated to be anyway, and instead bring Future Chelsea back to safety. This standard officious-prick character, apparently a Southerner, is played by all-purpose-European Peter Stormare, a great character actor whose strength is not accents. Hey wait:
Somebody asked Peter Stormare to do a Southern accent for this movie.
Somebody asked Londoner Idris Elba to do a Southern accent in Prometheus.
Neither Southern accent is a good fit.
Guy Pearce is in both movies.
Coincidence?
Or space-conspiracy?
Anyway, when it comes to Space Prison I know you guys are still stuck on thinking about Escape From New York, but let me just tell you that this guy Snow escapes from New York in the first ten minutes of the movie. See? Totally different. He gets on board the Space Prison and almost immediately gets into a zero-gravity fight scene that actually reminded me a lot of that “Burp, Charlie! Burp!” routine from Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory.
That’s the thing about this movie, for everything that feels a bit fresh about Space Prison — such as the “voice sensor” grenades which are throwable explosives that are sound-activated (like the Clapper!) — there’s an equal and opposite moment that feels like a blatant and occasionally bizarre reference to a movie you’ve seen many times already. If you watch Space Prison expecting it to be as hardcore serious and straight-up badass as Escape From New York or Die Hard or No Escape or Lock-Up or any of the other cool movies it owes a beer to, you’ll see it as a missed opportunity. It’s such a silly movie that as long as you’re willing to go with the silliness, you’ll have fun.
I mean, let’s talk about the villains. They’re supposed to be these horrible felons, the worst of the worst, murderers and rapists, but at the same time everyone cracks jokes as if they they share ghost-writers with Dane Cook. All of the bad guys look like they come from that Marvel Comics storyline back in the 1990s where all the X-Men had tattoos and scars and everybody carried guns and knives.
The main bad guy, “Alex”, looks like that hilariously awful X-Men character Cable.
Even Guy Pearce looks like he was drawn by Todd McFarlane or something in this movie. He looks like he was redrawn to look like Brad Pitt, or like Liev Schreiber (but only in X-Men Origins: Wolverine). Check it out — there are literally a couple of scenes where you can see him thinking, “I’ve uttered words written by Brian Helgeland, the Nolan brothers, and bloody Nick Cave, and now… I’m not doing that at all.”
Space Prison is an enjoyable, energetic, good-looking movie, and I had a good time, but let’s face it, there’s a climactic scene where the main characters literally jump out of space and land safely on what looks for all the world like Southern California’s 10 Freeway. (The story started out in New York, remember?) It’s a very, very stupid movie. In the press notes for the movie, Stephen St. Leger talks about Billy Wilder being a pivotal influence on the interplay between Guy Pearce and Maggie Grace, and also says that “The relationship between Emilie and Snow brings to mind Bogart and Hepburn in The African Queen. In other words, two polar opposites who are forced to get along.” Which is great. Even the press notes are stupid. To watch Space Prison, you’d have guessed they had John Carpenter on the brain, but it turns out it was John Huston all along.
But hey, they can’t all be The African Queen. Not even the ones that apparently wanted to be.
Film Forum’s phenomenal “Spaghetti” Westerns series comes to a close tonight. It’s been an amazing month of well-known and adored consensus-classics, seldom-screened rarities, and near-forgotten oddities. As expected, I didn’t have nearly enough time to get downtown — as you may have noticed, I haven’t even had much time this month to write about movies, let alone see them. Here are my expanded notes on A Fistful Of Dollars and Django, and please be on the lookout for my upcoming piece on Sergio Sollima’s vastly-underseen 1966 classic, The Big Gundown, to which I am trying to pay the kind of tribute it deserves.
Tonight the festival ended with a quadruple-header of Duck, You Sucker!, Death Rides A Horse, Django, and my personal favorite anything, The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly. I’ve written about this big, beautiful, belligerent odyssey before, and if you haven’t read that yet, please take a minute to do so…
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What can you say about your favorite movie? This one is mine.
There is literally nothing I can write about The Good The Bad & The Ugly that hasn’t already been written, and by more famous names. It’s not exactly an underrated movie. It’s certainly the most straight-ahead entertaining Great Movie that regularly makes the greatest-ever lists. (It clocked in prominently on my own all-time top-50.)
Watching it again last Monday, I was struck by the fact that it’s not a movie with much of an agenda beyond pure storytelling. It’s not a grand statement on humanity or history. It’s a story. As the poster’s tagline (one of the best ever written), “For three men, the Civil War wasn’t hell. It was PRACTICE!” Sure, for some characters in this demented picaresque, war is hell, but for the three leads, those monosyllabic archetypes in the title, war is just an appropriately chaotic backdrop for their self-involved quest. The whole thing is about three guys looking for buried treasure!
Good, Bad, Ugly: Does it really matter? They all have the same damn goal.
The Good The Bad & The Ugly is a callback to the previous Leone classic, For A Few Dollars More, in that it stars the blond/brunet tandem of Clint Eastwood (The Good) and Lee Van Cleef (The Bad), although it escalates the setting and the scale (and the running time) to an operatic degree. What’s really fascinating to me about this movie the more I watch it is that Eli Wallach (The Ugly) is truly the star of the movie. The movie begins and ends with him, and he seems to have the most screen time by a wide margin. After the first introductory scenes of The Good and The Bad, I don’t think either of them have a scene that doesn’t also include The Ugly. He not only has a first and last name, but a ton of middle names (Tuco Benedicto Pacifico Juan Maria Ramirez) AND an alias (a.k.a. The Rat), and he is the only one with the backstory (a life of crime begun to aid sick parents, which has now alienated him from his brother the priest). Meanwhile, Clint’s character has a name but probably one that Tuco gave him – “Blondie” – and Van Cleef is referred to as “Angel-Eyes” – which is hilarious if it was also given him by Tuco, but either way is still an alias. The Good The Bad & The Ugly is really Tuco’s movie.
Again, the underrated scriptwriting of Leone and his staff and the accurately-praised career-highlight score of Morricone, along with the cinematography of Tonino Delli Colli, have everything to do with the perfection of The Good The Bad & The Ugly, but the importance of the casting of Eli Wallach to the tone of the movie should not be underestimated. He brings a wealth of serious training to the role, but also a go-for-broke sense of humor. There’s a real mischievous sparkle in Tuco’s eye – he’s a quintessential survivor and a classic rogue. Wallach really commits to this role – you couldn’t call him handsome in this movie, and his accent is as solid as any gringo has ever pulled off. And he’s funny. God DAMN. Holy shit. This movie is so damn funny, without ever losing its mythic grandeur.
It’s weird though – for a movie that defines its three main characters in such rigid terms, “good,” “bad,” and “ugly,” the morality (or faltering degree of such) isn’t remotely as rigid. Clint’s character doesn’t do much good for anyone outside of offering and lighting a couple of cigars, and even Angel-Eyes, as unrelentingly violent as he can be, clearly operates under a certain code of behavior. Tuco doesn’t seem to have any rules or boundaries or philosophy – just greed, gluttony, and self-preservation – but at least we have a faint suggestion of how he became that way, so even he isn’t strictly “Ugly.” So it’s not a morality play. It’s just a story. It’s just a story, but it’s the one I’d watch all the way through, any time of night or day, right now if I could.
A Fistful Of Dollars wasn’t the very first entry in the genre they call “Spaghetti Western,” but it sure as hell was the spark that lit the firing pin. Sergio Leone is arguably the greatest and certainly the best known and most influential of the “Spaghetti” directors. He started out working on historical epics, and was somewhat hilariously credited as “Bob Robertson” on the American release of this, his first Western, but the name Sergio Leone is now synonymous with the genre.
Leone’s inspired approach was right there in Fistful – his absolute mastery of the widescreen frame, his deliberate and confident pacing, and his enlisting of his most important collaborator, composer Ennio Morricone, whose name will recur on just about every movie on the list you’re about to read. Morricone is the most innovative and experimental of the great film composers – there is literally nothing in movies like a Morricone score. Leone reportedly played selections from Morricone’s scores on the set – a brilliant inspiration that was unprecedented then, and completely unheard of today.
The plot of Fistful is an appropriation of the story from Akira Kurosawa’s Yojimbo – a taciturn stranger strolls into a town that is ruled by a feud between two warring families, and plays them against each other for his own gain. In this movie the families are recast as the Baxters and the Rojos, which adds a dash of racial tension to the mix, but not really. Leone wasn’t really concerned with social implications, and besides, the Rojos are mostly played by Italians – including popular “Spaghetti” fixture Gian Maria Volonte.
Of course, the main legacy of A Fistful Of Dollars, beyond its world-changing score and the fact that it remains entertainment of the highest order, is that it brought us Clint Eastwood. Leone took a guy who was wrapping up eight years on a TV show that is now largely forgotten but for its theme song (Rawhide) and cast him perfectly as the mysterious lead, who despite the famous “Man With No Name” ad campaign, does have a name here. It’s “Joe.” Of course there isn’t a last name, or anything resembling a backstory. Whether Joe’s sparse dialogue was a function of character or a response to the international nature of the production, he sure doesn’t talk too much, and when he does, it either means a mountain, or it reflects a sense of the blackest humor. This introduced the main Eastwood persona that has proven a durable basis for five unprecedented decades of the greatest career in movies.
If you’re looking for an entry point, this movie is the best possible choice.
I’m going to work really hard not to leaven this posting with my own typically arch commentary, since most days it feels like this website is a Clint Eastwood fan blog and that’s not an accusation I work too hard to dispel. I can’t NOT address that this thing is happening, but I’m going to be as respectful as possible since it should be clear to all casual readers that I am a massive admirer of the film career of Clint Eastwood, one of the greatest movie stars ever, definitely the greatest actor-turned-director ever, and an unquestioned living legend. I have no interest in talking smack about one of my lifelong creative heroes or any of his family members. But they’ve been busy recently.
Clint’s wife and some of his children will be appearing on a reality show on E! Entertainment Television, the channel that brings us Keeping Up With The Kardashians and all of its spin-offs. The Eastwood show is called Mrs. Eastwood & Company, and while it promises to have brief appearances from the man himself, the main focus on the show is said to be on two of the Eastwood daughters and their personal lives, and then also on the South African boy band (!) that Mrs. Eastwood manages.
Here’s the ultra-brief promo that E! has been running:
This article breaks down that promo in some detail. (I also cut-and-pasted the official press release at the bottom of ths post.) It helps to make this enterprise a whole lot more understandable…
Daughters want some spotlight.
The Mrs. wants to get her musical group out there.
Dad has a bit of fame to spare.
All of this is leading toward a truth I hold to be self-evident:
Women can be pretty persuasive, even if you’re Clint Goddamn Eastwood.
I was curious about what “Overtone” might sound like, so I looked them up on YouTube:
[via press release from E!] E! ANNOUNCES NEW SERIES “MRS. EASTWOOD & COMPANY” TO DEBUT MAY 2010 Episode Half-Hour Series Takes Viewers Inside The Fascinating World Of The Eastwood FamilyLos Angeles, CA, March 13, 2012 – Chronicling the lives of Dina Eastwood, the wife of Oscar-winning film legend Clint Eastwood, and their daughters Francesca (18) and Morgan (15), and the all-male six member vocal group from South Africa managed by Dina, “Overtone,” “Mrs. Eastwood & Company” is an unprecedented look at the surprisingly normal extended and blended family behind one of Hollywood’s most iconic superstars. This series invites viewers to witness their lives and proves that familial bonds are shaped by more than DNA. Developed by Executive Producer Jeff Jenkins for Bunim-Murray Productions, the series follows Dina, Francesca, Morgan, the six members of “Overtone,” and those intimately involved in their world, wherever their lives may take them, from their hometown of Carmel, CA to Los Angeles and beyond. “Mrs. Eastwood & Company” premieres Sunday, May 20 only on E!”Nothing is more important to me than family – no matter how you define that,” said Dina Eastwood. “People might be surprised by how we live our lives and our unconventional approach, and I also believe that it’s hard not to fall in love with my band, ‘Overtone.’”"I’m really proud of my family,” adds Clint Eastwood. “They are a constant source of inspiration and entertainment.”
“‘Mrs. Eastwood & Company’ offers an exceptional look at a rarely seen side of pop culture and we’re thrilled to bring this wonderful family to our viewers,” said Lisa Berger, President, Entertainment Programming, E! “This refreshing group delivers on the network’s promise to present fascinating personalities who have compelling stories and unique points of view.”
MEET THE FAMILY
A California native, Dina is a former news anchor who, in 1993, was assigned an interview with Clint Eastwood. She certainly got more than she bargained for as the reporter and the actor/director married three years later. Beautiful and boho-chic, she is a constant fixture in her daughters’ daily lives and works to create as harmonious a home as possible. That’s not to say that the exuberant brunette doesn’t have a hobby: in fact, she has SIX. While in South Africa with Clint three years ago, Dina discovered a six-man vocal group who call themselves “Overtone.” Moved by their talent and star-potential, she re-located all six young musical men to Carmel, CA and has been acting as their mentor, mother and manager ever since.
Opinionated and artistic, Francesca Eastwood is the daughter of Clint Eastwood and Frances Fisher, though she also calls Dina “mom.” A bit of a ‘free spirit,’ Francesca is in a serious relationship with her 29-year old boyfriend, famed photographer Tyler Shields. She is his muse, he is her passion. Deeply in love, the couple has been together since 2011 and as a result, Francesca’s world and her relationships are changing.
High-school student Morgan Eastwood is compassionate with a heart of gold. She loves her mother very much, but is at that age where mothers and daughters don’t always see eye to eye and she is constantly surrounded by her group of close friends. Occasionally embarrassed by Dina’s behavior, Morgan is experiencing watershed moments of her adolescence from learning how to drive to finding her own voice. Watching Francesca become an adult and being surrounded by the older boys in “Overtone,” Morgan is now on the brink of womanhood.
Comprised of six sexy young men – Emile Welman, Eduard Leonard, Tino Ponsonby, Ernie Bates, Riaan Weyers and Shane Smith – “Overtone” is one of the most popular acts in South Africa and has performed with A-list musicians such as Corinne Bailey Rae and One Republic. Emile is tall, dark and handsome and is the front-man of the group. He and Francesca have a distant history of flirtation…though no one knows the real story. Tino is recently engaged and his charismatic, yet ornery, behavior sometimes causes tension within the group; Eduard is the heart and soul of the group, sweet and sensitive; Ernie can play almost any instrument and has been making music since childhood; Riaan is the “animal-whisperer” of the group – he can woo almost any creature- four legged or two legged and Shane is the crew’s self-described “ladies man.”
Dina Eastwood and Bunim/Murray Productions’ Jonathan Murray, Gil Goldschein, Jeff Jenkins and Russell Jay serve as Executive Producers.
The new E! series “Mrs. Eastwood & Company” premieres May 20 on E!
About E! Entertainment
E! is television’s top destination for all things entertainment and celebrity. E! is currently available to 98 million cable and satellite subscribers in the U.S. and the E! Everywhere initiative underscores the company’s dedication to making E! content available on all new media platforms any time and anywhere from online to broadband video to wireless to VOD. Popular programming includes E! core franchises, “E! News,” “The Soup,” “Chelsea Lately,” “Fashion Police” and “True Hollywood Story,” as well as the network’s hit series “Keeping Up with the Kardashians,” “Khloé & Lamar,” “Kourtney and Kim Take New York,” “Ice Loves Coco” and “Kendra.” Additionally, E!’s “Live from the Red Carpet” signature events keep fans connected to their favorite stars on Hollywood’s biggest nights. E! is a network of NBCUniversal Cable Entertainment, a division of NBCUniversal, one of the world’s leading media and entertainment companies in the development, production, and marketing of entertainment, news and information to a global audience.
About Bunim/Murray Productions
Bunim/Murray Productions is the leading producer of innovative entertainment content. The Emmy Award-winning company is widely credited with creating the reality television genre with its hit series The Real World (25 seasons for MTV). Bunim/Murray continued to innovate with the first reality game show, Road Rules (MTV), in 1995; the first reality sitcom, The Simple Life (E!), in 2003; and the first reality soap opera, Starting Over, in 2003. Bunim/Murray’s current programming includes The BadGirls Club, Love Games and the upcoming Best Ink (Oxygen), Keeping up with the Kardashians, Kourtney & Kim Take New York and Khloe & Lamar (E!), The Real World and The Challenge (MTV) and Project Runway and Project Runway All Stars (Lifetime). Bunim/Murray Productions has launched additional entities including M Theory Entertainment, BMP Films and M Music. BMP Filmsproduced Pedro (MTV) and the Emmy Award-winning Autism: The Musical (HBO). Based in Van Nuys, CA, Bunim/Murray Productions was founded in 1987 by Jonathan Murray and the late Mary-Ellis Bunim. The company joined Banijay Group in 2010.
I probably should be doing about 50 other things at this very moment, but I saw this great top-50 list today and was inspired it to immediately answer it. I made my list very, very quickly, so in plenty of ways it’s the most honest form a list like this could ever arrive in. While the numbering is fairly arbitrary (until the top five, where shit gets definite) and while the contents could easily change as soon as five minutes from now, this is still a fairly good representation of what a top fifty movies list from me should look like. Anyway, let’s hit it. Links where they fit. I eagerly await any and all comments you might make!
Take my words with as big a helping of salt as you choose, since I have got to be the biggest Clint Eastwood fan this side of forty. I have found something worth remembering and studying within every entry of his directorial output, even in the ones I don’t happen to prefer, and if the man himself actually appears in said entry, so much the better. I do believe that Gran Torino has something important to say, and – forget what you may have read – it’s not about race. That issue factors in here, of course, but not as much as most of the reviews seem to think. It’s not Clint’s way to hit you over the head with ideas about race. Instead, in Gran Torino he’s talking about America, and the national character upon which America was built, and how we later generations were given that America and how we’re beginning to forget it. It’s about the pussification of America, and what to do about it.
The reviews I’ve seen that use the word “racist” in conjunction with Gran Torino are simply stupid. Clint has never once made a movie endorsing racist views – on the contrary, in fact – and he isn’t about to start now. He’s playing a character here; don’t ever confuse the story with the storyteller. His character, Walt Kowalski, says plenty of racist things, but even he isn’t necessarily racist. Pussies put so much value on words that they forget that, more than anything, men are defined by their actions. Look at the actions, not the words. When Walt sees how his young Hmong neighbor Sue handles herself bravely in an intimidating situation, he immediately warms to her. When he sees her brother Thao help a lady with her spilt groceries after a couple other little shits laugh her off, Walt starts to see a kid worth knowing, worth toughening, worth ultimately saving.
Race in America has become THAT complicated, and some people are nearly that complicated: Walt hates everybody equally, his use of racist epithets are primarily a method of distinction, not judgment. He calls Asians “zipperheads” not necessarily because he hates all Asians – he calls them “zipperheads” simply because that’s what he has always called them. Walt is so used to disappointment, from his chubby yuppie sons and their little-shit kids, from the pussy-ass gangstas walking his streets, from the young college-boy pussies who think they have all the answers, that at this point he hates everyone he meets on sight. When people prove his hate to be justified, he growls. When people prove their worth, he warms to them, even if he stubbornly refuses to drop the lingo.
Gran Torino is a vintage Malpaso production, with all the class and smarts that tag has always guaranteed. Joel Cox edits with a pleasing rhythm, cinematographer Tom Stern provides an appropriately washed-out (and later, stark) palette, Clint’s son Kyle (with Michael Stevens) provide the neat score, and the script credited to Nick Shenck works just right, with an ending that even longtime Clint fans won’t see coming. I really hope that Clint isn’t done with acting, and if he isn’t, I hope he directs himself again – he knows how to use Clint Eastwood as an actor. He understands the history and audience expectations that come with a Clint Eastwood film, and he knows how to subvert, parody, and/or work alongside all of that. I haven’t seen a Clint character spit this much since The Outlaw Josey Wales, and I would guess that the reference is very much intentional. Love it.
“Now remember, when things look bad and it looks like you’re not gonna make it, then you gotta get mean. I mean plumb, mad-dog mean. ‘Cause if you lose your head and you give up then you neither live nor win. That’s just the way it is.”
