Film Excess - Free Ukraine - Stop Putin - End the war NOW!!: Gran Torino (2008) - Eastwood's actor persona comes full circle in absolute smash

4/04/2020

Gran Torino (2008) - Eastwood's actor persona comes full circle in absolute smash

♥♥♥♥♥♥

+ Best Movie of the Year

+ Best American Movie of the Year + Best Car Movie of the Year + Best Crime-Drama of the Year + Best Mega-hit Movie of the Year

One of cinema's biggest stars ever looks reprovingly at us with a rifle before his title car on this poster for Clint Eastwood's own Gran Torino

Walt Kowalski is a Korea War veteran and retired car plant worker in Detroit who has just lost his wife. His sons want to move him to a home for the old. His neighbors are Asians of a culture Kowalski doesn't know. And the local church father wants him to confess his sins.

Gran Torino is written by Nick Schenk (The Judge (2014)), with Dave Johannson contributing story elements, and directed by Californian master filmmaker Clint Eastwood (Play Misty for Me (1971)), whose 29th feature it is.
Eastwood is brilliant and seems to end his on-screen career in the rightest way possible here, - although the movie wasn't his last as an actor. (The legend had a great co-starring performance in Trouble with the Curve (2012)) and a probably last starring turn in the fine The Mule (2018).) His movie star tough guy, super independent vigilante persona, however, comes beautifully full circle in Gran Torino.
Schenk's dialog is ingenious, and Gran Torino is that rare vehicle that is both tremendously funny, entertaining and dramatically charged: It is about important themes: Prejudice, tolerance, knowing right from wrong, taking a stand and standing up straight, but most importantly, it is about what it means to be a real man.
Together with Sam Mendes' Revolutionary Road, Gran Torino was my greatest cinema experience in 2008. Both are American masterpieces.

Related posts:

Clint Eastwood: Sully (2016) - Eastwood's miracle landing biopic is inert and overrated
2014 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED IV]
2014 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED III]
Top 10: The best biopic movies reviewed by Film Excess to date
2014 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]
2014 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]
American Sniper (2014) - Eastwood conveys an American man and myth in electric masterpiece
2011 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]
2011 in films - according to Film Excess
J. Edgar (2011) - Eastwood, Black and DiCaprio's great, intense biopic

2008 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED III]

2008 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]
The Changeling (2008) or, The Christine Collins Story

2006 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]

2006 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess
Letters from Iwo Jima/硫黄島からの手紙 [Öjima Kara no Tegami] (2006) - The Japanese side of Eastwood's remarkable WWII two-parter

Flags of Our Fathers (2006) - Eastwood's Iwo Jima portrayal is captivating and profoundly moving
The Dead Pool (1988) - The highly entertaining last Dirty Harry movie (starring actor)
City Heat (1984) - Eastwood and Reynolds wrestle dispassionately in Benjamin's messy period affair (co-starring actor)
Tightrope (1984) - An undervalued Clint Eastwood sex killer thriller (starring actor)
Any Which Way You Can (1980) or, More Monkey Business! (starring actor)
Escape from Alcatraz (1979) - Siegel, Tuggle and Eastwood's phenomenal prison escape thriller (starring actor)
Every Which Way but Loose (1978) or, Honky Tonk Monkey Business! (starring actor)
The Enforcer (1976) - Eastwood teaches revolutionaries a lesson in third, less punchy Dirty Harry (starring star)
The Eiger Sanction (1975) - Eastwood's mountain climbing dud
The Beguiled (1971) - Intense, erotic Civil War kammerspiel thriller (starring actor)
Dirty Harry (1971) - Eastwood's great, signature renegade cop character comes to life (starring actor)
Coogan's Bluff (1968) or, Dopes and Hippies, Beat It! (starring actor)
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966) - Leone ends his poncho trilogy with certified classic (starring actor)
For a Few Dollars More/Per Qualche Dollaro in Più (1965) or, Return of the Poncho Killer (co-starring actor)
A Fistful of Dollars (1964) or, Killer in a Poncho (starring actor)

Watch a short home video release teaser for the film here

Cost: Estimated 33 mil. $
Box office: 269.9 mil. $
= Mega-hit (returned 8.17 times its cost)
[Gran Torino premiered December 9 (California) and runs 116 minutes. According to Schenk, he had had the basic idea since the early 1990s and wrote the script in a bar in Minneapolis; he says 'not a syllable' was changed in the script, when it was sold. The scene was changed from Minneapolis to Detroit, partly for a newly instated 42 % tax credit there. A large cast of amateur Laos Hmong actors were employed for the film for the first time in mainstream film history. Shooting took place for just 5 weeks in Michigan, including Detroit from July - ? 2008. The film opened #20 for a 271k $ weekend in 6 theaters in North America, where it peaked at #1 and in 3,045 theaters (different weeks), staying another 4 weeks in the top 5 (#2-#2-#3-#5) and grossing 148 mil. $ (54.8 % of the total gross). The 2nd and 3rd biggest markets were France with 27.8 mil. $ (10.3 %) and Spain with 19 mil. $ (7 %). It was Eastwood's highest-grossing film to date, since then surpassed by his American Sniper (2014). The film was nominated for a Golden Globe, won an AFI award, a César award, a David di Donatello award and 3 National Board of Review awards, among other honors, but was missed completely by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Roger Ebert gave it a 3.5/4 star review, translating to a notch harder than this one. Vocal debate flourished among the Hmong minority and other Asian groups following the release with some in favor of the portrayal and some critical. In excess of 4 mil. DVD copies and 332k Blu-rays were sold in the North-American home video market were sold, accruing further 72.4 mil. $. IMDb's users have voted the film in at #176 on the site's Top 250, sitting between Stalker (1979) and The Truman Show (1998). Eastwood returned with Invictus (2009) as director and in Trouble with the Curve (2012) as an actor. Gran Torino is certified fresh at 81 % with a 7.12/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of Gran Torino?

No comments:

Donald Sutherland has passed away

Born in Canada, Sutherland battled polio as a child. His first credit was in Suspense (1963, TV-series) and his first film was The Castle of the Living Dead (1964). Later credits in his remarkable career include The Saint (1965-66), The Dirty Dozen (1967), M*A*S*H (1970), Kelly's Heroes (1970), Klute (1971), Don't Look Now (1973), 1900 (1976), Casanova (1976), The Eagle Has Landed (1976), Ordinary People (1980), A Dry White Season (1989), JFK (1991), Outbreak (1995), Fallen (1998), Virus (1999), Fierce People (2005), Pride & Prejudice (2005), Lord of War (2005), The Hunger Games (2012), The Undoing (2020, miniseries) and many more. He passed away at age 88. R.I.P.

Roger Corman has passed away

Born in Detroit, Michigan, Corman had a sprawling, intellectually hungry life as a youth and young man before arriving with his first film in 1955, Five Guns West. He would follow that with titles such as Apache Woman, It Conquered the World, Attack of the Crab Monsters, Teenage Cave Man, A Bucket of Blood, House of Usher, The Little Shop of Horrors, The Pit and the Pendulum, The Intruder, The Raven, The Terror, The Masque of Red Death, The Tomb of Ligeia, The Wild Angels, The Trip, Bloody Mama and many more. As a producer he was behind almost 500 films. Arguably among the most important filmmakers of the 20th century, Corman passed away at age 98. R.I.P.

William Friedkin has died

Born in Chicago, Friedkin accrued TV credits prior to his advance to the big screen as the director of Good TImes (1967), The Birthday Party (1968), The Night They Raided Minsky's (1968) and The Boys in the Band (1970) before his major breakthrough, The French Connection (1971), for which he won his only Oscar. He followed it up with the even bigger smash, The Exorcist (1973), arguably the best horror film of all time, for which he was Oscar-nominated. Later credits include Sorcerer (1977), Cruising (1980), To Live and Die in L.A. (1985), Rampage (1987), Rules of Engagement (2000), Killer Joe (2011) and The Devil and Father Amorth (2017, documentary). Friedkin passed away at age 87. R.I.P.

Louise Fletcher has passed away

Born in Alabama to deaf parents, Fletcher got her first credits in late-1950s TV-series.She took a 10 year-long sabbatical to devote her time to motherhood after the release of A Gathering of Eagles, but then came back and soon saw her career's most important part, as Nurse Ratched in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975), for which she won her sole Oscar. Later credits include Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977), The Lucky Star (1980), Brainstorm (1983), Two Moon Junction (1988), Cruel Intentions (1999), A Perfect Man (2013) and many more. Fletcher passed away at age 88. R.I.P.

Jean-Luc Godard has passed away

Born in Paris, France, Godard lived much of his life in Switzerland. He wrote for French film criticism magazine Cahiers du Cinema and became foundational for the New French Wave that inspired new waves in scores of other countries across the world with his Breathless (1960). Later credits include A Woman Is A Woman (1961), Vivre Sa Vie (1962), Le Petit Soldat (1962), Contempt (1963), Alphaville (1965), Pierrot le Fou (1965), 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her (1967), Weekend (1967), Every Man for Himself (1980), King Lear (1987), Century of Cinema (1995, documentary), Goodbye to Language (2014) and many more. Godard died of assisted suicide at age 91. R.I.P.

Wolfgang Petersen has died

James Caan has died

Caan was born the son of Jewish immigrants from Germany in New York. He got his start on TV in the early 1960s. His credits include El Dorado (1966), The Rain People (1969), Brian's Song (1971, TV movie), The Godfather (1972), - for which he earned his only Oscar nomination, - Slither (1973), The Gambler (1974), Funny Lady (1975), Rollerball (1975), Silent Movie (1976), Hide in Plain Sight (1980), - the only film he also directed, - Thief (1981), Misery (1990), Honeymoon in Vegas (1992), Bottle Rocket (1996), Eraser (1996), Dogville (2003), Elf (2003), Las Vegas (2003-07), Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs (2009) and many more. Caan passed away at age 82. R.I.P.

Jean-Louis Trintignant has died

Born in Vaucluse, France, Trintignant's theatrical debut as an actor was in If All the Guys in the World... (1955). Later credits include ...And God Created Woman (1956), The Seven Deadly Sins (1961), Inferno (1964), A Man and A Woman (1966), My Love, My Love (1967), A Man to Kill (1967), The Great Silence (1968), Z (1969), The Assassination (1972), Three Colors: Red (1994), Amour (2012), Happy End (2017) and many more. He also wrote and directed two films in the 1970s. Trintignant passed away at age 91. R.I.P.

Ray Liotta has died

Adopted from an orphenage at a young age, Liotta got hooked on acting in high school. He had various TV credits in the late 1970s and early 80s, with his film debut in The Lonely Lady (1983). Later credits include Something Wild (1986), Field of Dreams (1989), Goodfellas (1990), Cop Land (1997), Hannibal (2001), Blow (2001), Narc (2002), John Q (2002), Identity (2003), Observe and Report (2009), Youth in Revolt (2009), The Details (2011), Killing THem Softly (2012), The Place Beyond the Pines (2012), Shades of Blue (2016-18), The Simpsons (2018, TV-series), Marriage Story (2019), The Many Saints of Newark (2021), Black Bird (2022, TV-series) and many more. Liotta passed away at age 67 in his sleep while on production in the Dominican Republic. R.I.P.

Philip Baker Hall has died

Born in Ohio, Hall didn't start acting until he was 30. His long list of credits include Zabriskie Point (1970), Miami Vice (1987, TV-series), Midnight Run (1988), Ghostbusters II (1989), Cheers (1993, TV-series), Hard Eight (1996), The Rock (1996), Air Force One (1997), Boogie Nights (1997), Seinfeld (1991-98), Rush Hour (1998), The Insider (1999), Magnolia (1999), The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999), Bruce Almighty (2003), Dogville (2003), The Zodiac (2005), Zodiac (2007), Curb Your Enthusiasm (2004-09), Mr. Popper's Penguins (2011), Modern Family (2011-12) and many more. Hall passed away at age 90. R.I.P.

Film Excess - Free Ukraine - Stop Putin - End the war NOW!!

Eagerly anticipating this week ... (17-24)

4/04/2020

Gran Torino (2008) - Eastwood's actor persona comes full circle in absolute smash

No comments:

Post a Comment

Eagerly anticipating this week ... (16-24)

My Blog List