Gran Torino is Vintage Eastwood

Clint Eastwood has hinted that Gran Torino might be his last gig in front of the camera, and “it is a humdinger of a valedictory,” writes Peter Travers in Rolling Stone. The movie, which tells the tale of a bigoted Korean War vet’s redemptive attempt to clean up his neighborhood, “is Eastwood’s hell-raising salute to every hard-ass he’s ever played.”

The film itself is an “almost over-the-top racial parable” with “obvious flaws,” by James Berardinelli’s reckoning on ReelViews, but it’s also “a rare movie that doesn't implode during the last reel.” Village Voice critic Scott Foundas thinks Torino’s in the running for Eastwood’s best movie. “‘That,’ future generations of fathers will someday tell their sons, ‘is what Clint Eastwood was all about.’” (More movie review stories.)