Gran Torino: Clint Eastwood’s acting swan song, where he cast himself as a lonely raging Polish bigot that spoke like the new batman and spent the whole film pointing guns and swearing at ethnics. He was happy to put differences aside for some beer though! The heavy handed racism makes the film hard to watch at times, and feels pretty excessive – not unlike Crash. The more times you see a frail pensioner stand off against gangs the less realistic the film felt. It’s great to see his relationship grow with his new friends but it takes a long time to kick in and the last scene, although epic, is pretty contrived – the film’s essentially an urban / modern Western. It’s a simple and powerful story, but it is full of stock characters and trundles along at a snail’s pace. His acting’s spot on, but overall the film’s missing some depth. As a comparison, it doesn’t have much on Mystic River.

Score 6/10