If you jump down to Offord's Oscar debate, you will see that he feels that Gran Torino and Clint Eastwood received a raw deal. I unfortunately disagree. Not for reasons most of you would think. Allow me to explain.
The movie was excellent, and I do not understand why it was not nominated for a Best Picture or something. I would guess that maybe the Oscar folks felt that it did not really push the race issue enough. Ah, what? Well go to filmdrunk and read his review. Either the Oscar folks missed the point the of the movie, or they felt that for it to be really provocative and inspiring it needed to go that extra mile. Who knows.
Why do I feel that Clint does not deserve a Best Actor though? Well, he won an Oscar for this character already. William Munny in Unforgiven. Ever see it? Munny is a hard man, who killed "women and children." Now he is retired from the hard life and just trying to raise his kids after his wife dies. We see all the same angry emotion from Munny that we saw Clint portray in Walt. Sorry, I just do not think this was a great acting performance.
I thought the movie was great, I cracked up for a good bit of it. It does not however rank above Unforgiven as my favorite Clint movie.
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Agree to disagree. After my gf, Leigh, got her first taste of Clint, we watched Unforgiven the next night since I own it. She liked the movie, but found it hard to root against anyone because they all make cases for being the hero of the story.
Anyway, I don't think the characters relate at all. Munny morphed into a good person since his days as a murderer, while Walt morphed into a bad person since his days as a soldier. In Unforgiven, he had to portray a man who tried to make amends with the terrible things he did as a youth, but in the end, could not escape the person that he was and accepted his hell bound journey.
In Gran Torino, Clint had to portray a man who was made into a monster, not someone who was born one. They did mention how he regretted the things he wasn't asked to do, but war does that to a person. After that, he became a person condemned to hell, but he accepted it. He did not think he had feelings left for anything in this world, but found that there was still hope inside him. His ultimate decision to sacrifice himself was devastating and beautiful, and made me really believe Clint WAS that person during the movie.
It was his growth as a character throughout the film, making you fall in love with someone who was as crude and racist as he was, that left me with a great impression. I still feel he is robbed, but yes he did win before (SO DID PENN).
All in all, Rourke should win.
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