Saw Gran Torino this morning January 26, 2009
Posted by Zack in Michigan , trackbackWe went to see Clint Eastwood’s Gran Torino this morning at the $4 special matinee.
What an amazingly well-done movie. It was great. But it needs to be said that one bad thing about the movie is it sets up the Eastwood character as this white savior in a low income neighborhood that’s mainly black and Hmong. The not-so-subtle message is that European American culture is superior (he saves, plans, works hard, keeps up his house, etc… while everyone else is just kind of lost to chaos and laziness). A great connection could have been made between the ultimate gang violence of America’s Asian wars and the neighborhood gang violence (the central story of the film) of some of the children of American’s most unfortunate victims and proxy fighters in the Vietnam war.
Nevertheless, it was incredibly satisfying to watch scenes of a Hmong girl schooling Eastwood when he asks, “Why didn’t you people stay over there?” And she says, “We fought on your side, and when you lost, we were f**ked and everyone was going to kill us. So we had to come here.”
I’m eagerly awaiting:
- any reviews/reactions from anyone in the Hmong community;
- a review by Thom Stark on the violence/non-violence message.
Comments»
no comments yet - be the first?