Review of Gran Torino (2008) by Arbie — 22 Jan 2009

It's Eastwood direction, but it's no Eastwood film that I want to own, or even recommend. The Hmong theme is utterly replaceable with any struggling race in terms of gang violence and identity, and does very little to highlight Hmong cultural value -- in fact, one of the film's unintentional jokes is that it summarily dismisses the Hmong as "just more Asians", and even fails during its expositional scenes to convince anyone of more than what's already commonly known: the Hmong fought with us more than 30 years ago, and were supplanted to places like Wisconsin in following decades as refugees.

So, anyone under 30 might walk away with some new superficial knowledge, but don't expect them to swallow the tired race theme -- political correctness and inverseness have BOTH been declared dead by succeeding generations.

Audiences over 30 might laugh longer and harder at the endless racism, but what's the value there? And why has nobody attacked the appallingly poor acting in the younger actors? This would be summarily thrown out if it had been directed by anyone else -- even anyone known.