Remains almost twenty years after its release Gran Torino (2008) one of the most beloved films from Clint Eastwood’s oeuvre. Eastwood, who has been in the film world for more than seven decades, has made and continues to make a lot of impressive films Gran Torino one of the fan favorites. Since this week the film can also be seen on Netflix.
A bitter man
Gran Torino follows Walt Kowalski, a gruff, recently widowed Korea veteran and retired auto factory worker who lives alone with his dog in a Detroit neighborhood. When his neighbor Thao is pressured by a local gang to steal Walt’s cherished 1972 Ford Gran Torino, Walt intervenes and prevents the theft. What starts as bitter disgust slowly grows into an unlikely bond between the old man and the Hmong family next to him. When the gang later uses violence against Thao and his family, Walt chooses a drastic way to protect them. The film was written by Nick Schenk and directed by Eastwood who also stars. The large Hmong-American cast is striking, which was unique for a major Hollywood production at the time. For the casting, auditions were held in Fresno, Detroit and Saint Paul, among others, and dozens of Hmong actors and hundreds of extras were recruited.
Location Detroit
The story was originally set to take place in the Hmong community of Minneapolis, where screenwriter Schenk was introduced to Hmong culture and history in the 1990s. Eventually, production moved to Metro Detroit, thanks in part to a favorable tax break from the state of Michigan and because the character Kowalski is a retired auto factory worker and Detroit is of course the birthplace of the American auto industry.
8.1 Watch on Netflix • The life of retired mechanic Walt Kowalski consists of do-it-yourself, drinking beer and the monthly haircut at the hairdresser.
Beeld: Still ‘Gran Torino’ via TMDb
