{"id":76,"date":"2009-02-19T10:28:00","date_gmt":"2009-02-19T17:28:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/churchofthemasses\/2009\/02\/grand-torino\/"},"modified":"2009-02-19T10:28:00","modified_gmt":"2009-02-19T17:28:00","slug":"grand-torino","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/churchofthemasses\/2009\/02\/grand-torino\/","title":{"rendered":"Grand Torino"},"content":{"rendered":"<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC \"-\/\/W3C\/\/DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional\/\/EN\" \"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/TR\/REC-html40\/loose.dtd\">\n<html><head><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><\/head><body><p>I shocked myself this week by really enjoying Clint Eastwood\u2019s latest offering <em>Gran Torino<\/em>.  I thought it was charming in many places and it made me laugh out loud several times.  The violence was surprisingly unbrutal for an Eastwood film, and most refreshingly of all, unlike almost all of Eastwood\u2019s projects, <em>Gran Torino<\/em> knows what it is about storywise and thematically and stays on target.  The film has none of Eastwood\u2019s trademark, \u201ccharacter motivation confusion mistaken for internal conflict\u201d that I usually end up scratching my head at from Clint.<\/p>\n<p>On top of that, the film is unabashedly patriotic and basically hopeful about at least a segment of the generations now coming of age.  There is also a very cool and respectful religion sub-plot, in which a priest is actually portrayed as a compassionate, thoughtful and three-dimensional human being.  <\/p>\n<p>All in all, there\u2019s a lot to like.<\/p>\n<p>The main stuff not to like is in the unevenness of many of the supporting performances.  There are a lot of cliches riding on the \u201creally bad urban gang members\u201d and the \u201creally ungrateful and worthless adult Boomer children.\u201d  Clint himself is channeling Dirty harry through much of the film, albeit a 76 year old one, but it is something we haven\u2019t seen from him in a while, and it is mostly played for laughs in a way that worked with our audience.<\/p>\n<p>The language is very tough in <em>Gran Torino<\/em>  If you can\u2019t stomach the F-word and pretty nearly every racial slur known in sveral languages, you won\u2019t be able to enjoy this film.  But I did.  I recommend <em>Gran Torino<\/em> as a good and humane story that will get to you in that catharsis of pity and fear of evil way that stories should.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I shocked myself this week by really enjoying Clint Eastwood\u2019s latest offering Gran Torino. I thought it was charming in many places and it made me laugh out loud several times. The violence was surprisingly unbrutal for an Eastwood film, and most refreshingly of all, unlike almost all of Eastwood\u2019s projects, Gran Torino knows what [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1121,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-76","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Grand Torino<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"I shocked myself this week by really enjoying Clint Eastwood&#039;s latest offering Gran Torino. I thought it was charming in many places and it made me laugh\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/churchofthemasses\/2009\/02\/grand-torino\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Grand Torino\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I shocked myself this week by really enjoying Clint Eastwood&#039;s latest offering Gran Torino. I thought it was charming in many places and it made me laugh\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/churchofthemasses\/2009\/02\/grand-torino\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Church of the Masses\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2009-02-19T17:28:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/_q0DXFHA7NW4\/SZ2JXtdv3OI\/AAAAAAAABqU\/86g0vHpFr3s\/s400\/gran+tor.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Barbara Nicolosi\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Barbara Nicolosi\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"1 minute\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/churchofthemasses\/2009\/02\/grand-torino\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/churchofthemasses\/2009\/02\/grand-torino\/\",\"name\":\"Grand Torino\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/churchofthemasses\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2009-02-19T17:28:00+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2009-02-19T17:28:00+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/churchofthemasses\/#\/schema\/person\/ba0f1b7b363d55ec96a9775380695055\"},\"description\":\"I shocked myself this week by really enjoying Clint Eastwood's latest offering Gran Torino. 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