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Gran Torino
- Thread starter TR6BILL
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SilentUnicorn
Yoda
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what is a "Mong" neighborhood?
I have seen the trailers, and plan on seeing it. Thanx for the review
mark
I have seen the trailers, and plan on seeing it. Thanx for the review
mark
SilentUnicorn
Yoda
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Ok- I got it. google is a wonderful thing. I wish we could <span style="font-weight: bold">all</span> live "a mong" each other....
mark
mark
You rookies.... Don't your know what a Mong is??? Having lived through the Vietnam Era, a Mong is Southeast Asian mountain person indigenous to the areas around Laos and Cambodia. They fought on our side during the Vietnam War, were preyed upon by the communists when we left. We imported many of them stateside after the war because they were preyed upon by what we left behind. Another success story of America's interventionism. The Mong were ferocious fighters. Unfortunately, they are like a fish out of water over here. Dr. Entropy, care to interject here??
texas_bugeye
Jedi Knight
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There is a large contigent of them that live in the midwest mostly detriot and Mpls areas they were sponsored by a lot of the churches. My experence with them is in MPLS area. They tend to keep to themselves. They love to hunt and fish.
Some times a little to much..
That was a great Eastwood performance. The best movie I have seen in a longtime. I bet we all know someone like him.
Some times a little to much..
That was a great Eastwood performance. The best movie I have seen in a longtime. I bet we all know someone like him.
V
vagt6
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What an artist, Eastwood. Seems the "Torino" part was literally made for him. Looks like another "Oscar" for Clint, and if so it will be well-deserved.
I hope this film helps to increase goodwill for the former Vietnamese among us. I've met a couple of Vietnamese over the years and gotten to know them very well. Fine folks, both of 'em, as good as any. Honest, hard-working, excellent family men. Wish we had more like them.
Go see the movie, it's a good one.
I hope this film helps to increase goodwill for the former Vietnamese among us. I've met a couple of Vietnamese over the years and gotten to know them very well. Fine folks, both of 'em, as good as any. Honest, hard-working, excellent family men. Wish we had more like them.
Go see the movie, it's a good one.
tony barnhill
Great Pumpkin - R.I.P
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I didn't see it that way...I saw an old man seeing his world crumbling around him, his children not interested in him, his grandchildren just waiting for him to die so they could get his 'stuff'....his wife was dead....his way of life was dying.TR6BILL said:
He was living with the memories of combat - the cruel & miserable winter combat in Korea...he saw his soul as lost because of that war & no way to redeem himself, until...
....& a perfect way to end the pain and suffering of lung cancer!
He never tried to get along with his neighbors, he tolerated them in the usual racial way of the period in which he grew up...to his friends of different ethnic backgrounds he could jest; to people he didn't care for, he used racial epithats to emphise his loathing.
You can't put modern-day rules of society on a man from another time..judge his based on his time, don't try to put our standards on him...when you do, you miss the real message.
SilentUnicorn
Yoda
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Basil said:
Yes you did- great Movie
mark (dreaming of Hillary Swank)
V
vagt6
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Guest
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tony barnhill said:
Here's what "The Village Voice" review says. It think it's right on:
<span style="font-style: italic">"Gran Torino," whatever its flaws are, is a movie about what America looks like now, and that the work of living amicably together is sometimes hard but always worth it. Is that a simplistic idea or a thorny, complex one? We can't know until, like Walt, we've figured out a way to make it work.</span>
And here's the "Variety" reveiw, which also hits the spot:
<span style="font-style: italic">"Gran Torino" is filled with themes and understated points of view, most fundamentally about the need to get beyond racial and ethnic prejudice, the changing face of the nation and the future resting in the hands of today's immigrants. In a way that clearly could not have been intended, Eastwood could be said to have inadvertently made the first film of the Obama era.</span>
I agree to disagree with Tony. If we judge the movie from a 1950-ish perspective (as Tony suggests), we miss the whole point of the script. The movie wasn't about "Walt's" anguish over his wartime experience: it was about <span style="text-decoration: underline">today's</span> societal problems and Walt's inability to deal with them with uttering racial slurs and insults. In the end, he starts to see society for what it really is, in real-time, not some antiquated vision clouded by ignorance and entrenched racist ideology.
If you judge this character by Tony's standards, as stated above, you will <span style="text-decoration: underline">definitely</span> miss the "real" message.
Anyone else?
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vagt6 said:
I don't want this to turn into a debate. Clint Eastwood, who made the film, has described in his own words what he intended for the film:
"What attracted him to Gran Torino—a somewhat smaller film from a first-time screenwriter featuring first-time actors and a quick 32-day shoot—was its contemporary portrayal of family and religion, and the storyline involving <span style="text-decoration: underline">the rescue of a Hmong teenager from gang violence</span>. He says he believed that he could take the lead character, Korean War vet turned vigilante Walt Kowalski, <span style="text-decoration: underline">on a journey</span>. Eastwood himself was in the military at the time of the war but never made it to Korea. He says that he “knew a lot of guys like [Walt],” and describes him (Kowalski) as a “reticent man.” Kowalski is not an easy guy to like—as Eastwood puts it, he’s “an equal-opportunity insulter”—but his journey “is honest, [and] <span style="text-decoration: underline">he changes.</span>”