Typically, Walt is the only resident on his street who still maintains his house and lawn. At the very sight of his next-door neighbors, a Hmong family, he stares and growls. He even tells them to “stay off my lawn” at one point.
They’re the least of his problems. Apparently, every young man in Detroit is part of an ethnic gang. Cruising the streets and flashing Uzis at each other, they make "Gran Torino" resemble a daylit counterpart to “The Warriors.” Walt really gets angry when his neighbors are victims of a gang drive-by.
Without the reliable magnetism of Clint Eastwood, “Gran Torino” would be nigh-unwatchable. The interaction between Walt’s eventual protégé Thao and the Hmong gang is straight out of an After School Special re: peer pressure. The Detroit Hmong population must be pretty small for the gang to be so insistent on initiating the wussy, taciturn Thao. Besides, he doesn’t have a car (spoiler: yet) and they can’t fit more than five people in their tricked-out Civic.
And for the most part, the non-actors are dreadful. One gets the feeling that Eastwood moved into a house in Detroit and just started filming the neighborhood. Thankfully, when sparring with Eastwood, their performances are slightly less anemic.
Providing much of the comedy in “Gran Torino” is Walt’s endless supply of ethnic slurs. They sting at first, before the true craziness of the film sinks in. After awhile, new scenes are suspenseful new opportunities for him to denounce an entire immigrant group. Take a shot every time he busts out a new one.
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