Gran Torino and Atonement

I just saw Gran Torino and was absolutely stunned by its brilliance. Not since Sling Blade have I seen a film that so elegantly captured life in the kingdom of God. If you can believe it, Clint Eastwood actually manages to create and portray a believable character who is part Archie Bunker, part Grumpy Old Man, part Dirty Harry, and, ultimately, part Jesus of Nazareth. This film and its grizzled, Korean War veteran main character, Walt Kowalski, are destined for Oscar accolades.

Gran Torino is a slow moving film with an undercurrent of violence, as warring gangs of Mexicans, Blacks, and Hmongs vie for control of Kowalski’s crumbling neighborhood and of his 1972 Green Ford Gran Torino. Kowalski's next door neighbors are a multi-generational but fatherless Hmong family, whose only boy, Thao, is being pulled into his cousin’s Hmong gang. Against all his instincts, Kowalski becomes the father Thao needs and then some, teaching him the lessons of hard work, manhood, and the effective control of his passions.

While much of the film is the story of Kowalski’s violent, gun-toting vigilante-ism, it is ultimately his single. brilliant act of non-violence that brings peace to the neighborhood. After the Hmong gang bores a lit cigarette through Thao’s face as punishment for his refusal to join them, peppers his home with machine gun fire, and rapes and batters his sister, Sue, to the brink of death, Kowalski reaches a point of no return. He cleans his weapons and talks with Thao about the need for a careful, methodical, approach to vengeance.

In the final, tense moments leading up to Kowalski’s ultimate confrontation with the Hmongs, he performs a series of religious rituals, preparing himself for his ultimate sacrifice. He takes a bath, gets a haircut and a shave, buys his first fitted suit, and goes to confession for the first time in “forever.” Locking Thao in his basement, Kowalski claims that he must confront the Hmong gang on his own. He tells a protesting Thao that he has his whole life in front of him while Kowalski has both bloody hands and a stained soul. What he didn’t tell Thao was that he would confront the gang armed with only a cigarette and a lighter.

There is a bloodbath in front of Hmong gang headquarters, but only one man’s blood is spilled. Kowalski is gunned down with his arms spread wide, crucifix-like, as blood trickles out of his pierced hands and sides. But Kowalski’s plan was thorough enough to ensure that every single neighbor witnessed the perpetrators this time, guaranteeing that Thao, Sue, and their family would never have to worry about these thugs again.

Eastwood’s Kowalski is as unlikely a hero as Harry Callahan and far less likeable. His non-stop spewing of racial and ethnic epithets begins with his very first line and actually continues even after he dies, as his last will and testament is read by an embarrassed, apologetic lawyer. Not only is Kowalski dismissive and offensive even to those “foreigners” he considers friends, but he’s more hateful still to his own children and grandchildren, actively disdaining them, writing them out of his life, not to mention out of his will.

And yet, in the end, Kowalski chooses to lay down his life for his friends, defeating the very force that had sustained him all these years. Is Kowalski’s death some sort of atonement for his sins? Or did he finally just come to see, as Gandhi did, that an eye for an eye only leaves the whole world blind? Any way you figure it, Clint Eastwood is still Hollywood's brightest star and her theologian in residence as well. Don't miss this film!