The Hero Should Live....

I watched Gran Torino this afternoon with Liz. She was reluctant with this as our movie selection. You see, it's not all that often we get to go to a movie together so naturally she wants to choose the best movie out at the time. And therein lies the rub: her idea of the best choice doesn't always align with my choice. In fact, it seldom does but considering the last two flicks we saw together were Twilight and The Day The Earth Stood Still, the choice clearly was mine to make. Or at least I thought so. She still insisted we review the list of flicks and discuss the options. Grrrrrr.

The theater was packed despite this being the second weekend and an afternoon time-slot but the average age had to be around 45 so it was tolerable. What I mean by that is that there weren't children and teenagers everywhere constantly making noise with their cells or needing to go potty and announcing it repeatedly for 10 minutes right behind me in my ear. You know what I mean, I hope. If you don't, I'm probably talking about you!

So how was the movie? In 2 words, very good. The only acting I thought was weak came from the Hmong kid actor, Thao. Otherwise, it's a solid movie from a veteran actor and director. There were tons of racial slurs that drew laughter from the audience almost constantly throughout the movie. Oddly enough it seemed acceptable - perhaps because it was coming from an old man where it didn't seem too out of place. I know in my life experience it seems the probability of racial comments increases with age of the person. In the movie, these slurs weren't limited to one or two races - they were spread around to all races and Nationalities. More or less making sure the love was spread amongst everyone and not isolating a few.

I must admit as the ending was laying out I wasn't happy with it. But once it was done I changed my mind and agreed with it. I guess I didn't like it initially because I grew up watching movies where the hero lived. Those were movies with Charles Bronson and Clint Eastwood, the original Billy-Joe-Bad-Ass's to me. You know - some major injustice (assault, murder) is conducted on an innocent by a bad guy and retaliation (assault, murder) occurs by the good guy with the good guy living on to fight another day. So for me that's the way those movies need to play out.