Filmjerk’s Edward Havens counters the “source” at Ain’t it Cool that Gran Torino is a Dirty Harry movie:
1) A new Dirty Harry movie? Not likely. The hot rumor is that a killer is riding around in a Gran Torino, and the now-retired Harry Callahan is on a mission to track down the culprit, as one of the victims was Callahan’s cop grandson. What do we know about Dirty Harry Callahan? We know that Harry was once married, but she was killed by a drunk driver, and never once in the five films in the series was there ever a mention of a child.
So, all of a sudden, Harry not only has a child he’s never once mentioned before, but this child is old enough to a child of their own, who is himself old enough to have become a police officer? Sorry, don’t buy it. Plus, if this was a Dirty Harry movie, you don’t release it in December anymore. You hold it until the summer months, when action films have a better play-off. December is now reserved for more family-friendly fare, straight dramas or awards bait films. More on that in a minute.
2) What is a Gran Torino? In Italian, “Gran Torino” means “The Grand Turin,” the city in Northern Italy which is considered the Detroit of Italy. Turin is also the home of the Mole Antonelliana, which now houses the Italian National Museum of Film and was greatly featured in Davide Ferrario’s beautiful 2004 homage to cinema, After Midnight. But in car culture, the Gran Torino is the muscle car built by Ford Motor between 1972 and 1976, best known as the car by officer David Starsky in the 1970s ABC series “Starsky and Hutch” as well as its 2004 movie adaptation. Hell, I can’t think of any way to spin this into it being a Western.
So if it’s not a Dirty Harry movie, and it’s not a western, just what the heck is “Gran Torino” anyway?
Our source tells us this will be a simple, quiet and compelling drama about Walt (Eastwood), a rural bigot who finds his outlook on life changed after a family of Hmong immigrants move in to the home next to his own, striking up a friendship with the family’s teenaged son Tao over the older man’s now-classic car.
The thing I keep coming back to is the way the title is announced, as in Dirty Harry in Sudden Impact or Magnum Force…Gran Torino just doesn’t fit the bill.