I’ve long ago lost my appetite for American “men-with-guns” movies. Two recent viewings dulled it even more. The American with George Clooney is recent and on the big screen now. Gran Torino, directed by and staring Clint Eastwood, is a few years older and available at your local video store or on-line service. Both tell stories whose attraction deep in our reptilian brains is to tough men with guns, both finally touched by love — too late.
The American is from a novel formerly called “A Very Private Gentleman,” by Martin Booth — an author who, with titles like Hiroshima Joe and The Industry of Souls, both about the lives of men after years in prison camps, looks to be an author interested in the deeper reaches of men’s hearts. Even the reviews for A Very Private Gentleman make it seem to be more dense with human complexity than your ordinary thriller.
I haven’t read the book so I can’t testify to any possible seriousness beneath the thrill. The movie doesn’t have it, for sure. It does have George Clooney, as my wife reminded me to overcome my reluctance to go (see above), and then there was the reward of seeing the stunning Violante Placido as Clara, his prostitute/girlfriend/love-of-his-life, and seeing her in her all-together as George was. And Italian to add to the fantasy. So far, so good.
Jack (Clooney) has worked for some years for an unnamed organization. Perhaps the CIA but could as well be any high-end gun running organization — the infamous Viktor Bout’s for example. Jack is not only a master marksman but a magician with metal working tools, making the most lethal weapons describable, with mail order and garage parts, at the behest of his boss for another comely gunner [Irina Bjorkland as Ingrid], who proves herself as cool under fire as Jack. There seems to be a part of movie makers’ amygdalas that get very very excited at gorgeous women rattling of specifications and detailed knowledge of arcane, custom made weaponry. He tests her; she tests him. He assembles the most amazing metal workshop in his small apartment in the small Italian town where he has hidden out — and not the one to which his boss sent him. He snaps gun parts together with a-u-t-h-o-r-i-t-y. So exciting! He files the tips of bullets. He fills some with mercury, in that oldest of old cinematic allusions to extra-super-duper lethality (which has no relation to reality.) He is, as all assassins are reputed to be, devoid of the notion of trust. He trusts no one.
And then enters Clara. Uff! Tenderness, affection, connection, love — and a big problem for an assassin and those who hire assassins. Not quite so dangerous to the mission is an engaging older, Italian priest, who not only befriends Jack but reveals secrets of his own while urging Jack to confess. He also seems to intuit, and approve of (?), the mission. I don’t know, but my guess is that the priest plays a larger part, thematically and plot-wise in the novel.
The tension ratchets up satisfyingly at the end, after innumerable wide angle shots of Abruzzo, Italy, Jack in his car, the road winding through the dry hills and more detailed shots of the river-side “paradiso,” where some of the significant action takes place. We gave the film extra marks for the scenery. It ends as you’ll suspect from the moment when boy meets girl. As the nuns used to warn us: don’t wait too long to find the lord (love) because when you’re ready, He/it may not be there.
At least, for a hit man movie, we can be glad it didn’t end in the orgy of sexualized, misogynistic hail of bullets that so many others favor as their, ahem, climax. Credit the novel, and Clooney himself I suppose. Not a bad film. Not one of the 500 best films of all time, either. I have to admit, seeing the gun runners in a sweet Italian town I couldn’t help but think of how un-thrilling, un-sexy, un-Hollywood is the American gun running to Mexico these days. 19,000 guns used in crimes in Mexico between 2006-2oo9 came from the United States. That’s three of every four guns used. 28,000 people died in this period. Make a movie about it. Make sure there’s some full frontal female nudity too….
Gran Torino
Clint Eastwood has made and starred in many good films, some great ones. Gran Torino is not one of them. The best of it, in my opinion, is in showing Hmong immigrants in America in some of their family get togethers, and to introduce them as real people that even an old curmodgeon like Walt Kolakowski can come to befriend.
Since Gran Torino has been around for a while I suppose you know the story, more or less. Curmudgeonly old Walt Kolakowski is living alone, his wife having just died, in the house they shared for decades. The neighborhood is changing. Gang-bangers, Hispanic and Asian, rumble down the street. A family of “gooks” has moved next door — and there are way too many of them. But Walt has that core American value of standing up for the little guy and the belief that the way to overcome violence is to be more violent. He gets involved with his big pistol on his front lawn when the Asian car-load comes to discipline the young boy in the neighboring house. He scares them off — for the time being, and the family begins to flood his steps and table with the food of thanks. It’s all pretty predictable — or at least you’ll think it is.
The problem is that Eastwood couldn’t just let Eastwood be Eastwood. Clint, the man, the actor, is the definition of the tough guy, wrapped around a heart of gold. In Gran Torino he tries to push this, to become a tough guy. The result is almost cartoonish at times as his face is exaggerated and his growling amplified. I counted four or five times when a click of the tongue, a curl of the lip, a turning the head would have conveyed more disapproval and “leave me alone,” than the gestures and vocalisms he let be.
There is a very silly “man-up” training for the young Hmong, Thao [Bee Vang] that could have been very good. Walt has taken him under his wing and gotten him a job at a construction site. But the kid is too “foreign.” Walt enlists the help of a barber friend to show him how men talk to each other –in insults and put-downs. In a couple of walk throughs, he gets it, uses appropriate curses on the barber and bonds with him, shows he’s got the lingo. The problem is of course that this kind of conversation, which certainly happens between men, happens as friendship is established and the insults are permitted, step by step. The same language in the wrong situation, launched at a stranger would not make him into a friend. Fists would fly and in some places, bullets. Too bad, a good scene wasted — even if somewhat funny.
The best thread of the movie was provided by Ahney Her as Sue, a spunky little non-Asian Asian. She gets in people’s faces and insists that Walt shuck his bigotry. “Get away from my dog,” he growls. “We don’t eat dogs.” She says. “Just cats.” She was believable in a tough, quirky way. Hope we see more of her.
The scenes of gang-bangers were good. You believed and were afraid.
The theme of turning over the Gran Torino, a very American icon, to newcomer Thao was good. Not only has he the natural “heir” of the much lusted over old machine, it was also the passing of the old order, as it were. The American suburbs are becoming American all over again.
The end, I’m sorry to say, is inexplicable. Don’t want to tell you what happened but after it’s all over you have to ask: what did Walt really intend with his approach on the house of the Hmong gang? The results are movie satisfying, but surely unplanned and unpredictable in the mind of the careful, plan-full man we take Kowalski to be.
I’m all for a good sentimental liberal story wrapped up in a gun-toting right wing story but this one fell short for me. For a really good Eastwood movie see Million Dollar Baby. Not many guns, but plenty of blood.
What ties the two films together is the unending American belief that guns are good, or if not good, at least thrilling. It’s not just the amygdalas of the film makers. It it all of ours. Guns in the hands of the right tough guy. Which is to say, Our Tough guy. Also a tough guy who is magic, who comes out on top, who, while injured, carries on, who sees earlier, shoots better, keeps cooler and in the end, saves the weaker, and prettier.
A pretty fantasy, but one which, when large enough, shared by many, changes the moral fabric of a nation. See Theweleit’s Male Fantasies for starters….