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DVDfever.co.uk – Gran Torino Blu-ray review Dom Robinson reviews
Warner Home Video Blu-ray: 
DVD:
- Cert:
- Running time: 116 minutes
- Cat no: Z1(DC)Y22508
- Year: 2008
- Pressing: June 2009
- Region(s): 2, PAL
- Chapters: 29 plus extras
- Picture: 1080p High Definition
- Sound: Dolby TrueHD, DTS 5.1, Dolby Digital 5.1
- Languages: English, French, German, Italian, Spanish
- Subtitles: English for hearing impaired, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Zhou, Korean, Danish, Finnish, Norwegian, Swedish
- Widescreen: 2.35:1
- 16:9-Enhanced: Yes
- Macrovision: Yes
- Disc Format: DVD 9
- Price: £27.99 (Blu-ray), £19.99 (DVD)
- Extras: Featurettes: The Eastwood Way, Manning The Wheel, Gran Torino: More Than a Car, Bonus Digital Copy, BD-Live Content
- Vote and comment on this film: View Comments
Director:
- Clint Eastwood
(Absolute Power, The Beguiled: The Storyteller, Bird, Blood Work, Breezy, The Bridges of Madison County, Bronco Billy, Changeling, The Eiger Sanction, Firefox, Flags of Our Fathers, The Gauntlet, Gran Torino, Heartbreak Ridge, High Plains Drifter, Honkytonk Man, Invictus, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, Million Dollar Baby, Mystic River, Letters from Iwo Jima, The Outlaw Josey Wales, Pale Rider, A Perfect World, Play Misty For Me, The Rookie, Space Cowboys, Sudden Impact, True Crime, Unforgiven, White Hunter Black Heart)
Producers:
- Clint Eastwood, Bill Gerber and Robert Lorenz
Screenplay:
- Nick Schenk (from a story by Nick Schenk and Dave Johannson)
Original Score :
- Kyle Eastwood and Michael Stevens
Cast :
- Walt Kowalski: Clint Eastwood
Sue Lor: Ahney Her
Thao Vang Lor: Bee Vang
Father Janovich: Christopher Carley
Mitch Kowalski: Brian Haley
Karen Kowalski: Geraldine Hughes
Ashley Kowalski: Dreama Walker
Steve Kowalski: Brian Bowe
Barber Martin: John Carroll Lynch
Tim Kennedy: William Hill
Vu: Brook Chia Thao
Grandman: Chee Thao
Youa: Choua Kue
Trey: Scott Reeves
Kor Khue: Xia Shoua Chang
Smokie: Sonny Vue
Spider: Doua Moua
Walt’s wife, Dorothy, has died and all he has left, apart from an ungrateful family, is his prized 1972 classic Gran Torino car.
Walt Kowalski (Clint Eastwood) is a grumpy old man who loves his car. He loves his dog, his solitary life, he loved his late wife and he doesn’t get on well with his two sons because they’ve never really got to know him. He also fought in the Korean War in the early ’50s and, as one of his sons says early on, he’s clearly still living in that decade.
He also doesn’t like the fact his new neighbours are Hmong, or “Chinks” as he initially refers to them, and moans that the man who lived there before would turn over in his grave if he saw how they’ve let his garden go to ruin. Coincidentally, the old lady sat out front also moans, in Hmong, about why he doesn’t move out given that all the Americans have long since left the neighbourhood. So, they should get on like a house on fire!
Things change when the lad of the family, Thao (Bee Vang), is persuaded to hang out with his violent cousin Spider (Doua Voua) and his dumb friends, which eventually leads to him being persuaded to steal the car, and later on when a fight breaks out amongst them next door, it spills onto Walt’s lawn which results in them staring down the barrel of his rifle and grimacing, “Get off my lawn!”, which comes across as quite an effective threat. The rest of the family, including his sister Sue (Ahney Her) and Mum, Vu (Brooke Chia Thao), thank him for his help, but he’s not interested.
The next day, he hears a thud outside the front of his house and reacts the only way he knows how – he grabs his gun and opens the door. He’s astounded to see endless plates of food, plus flowers aplenty being stacked at his front door, all in gratitude for his bravery.
Even the local priest wants to get to know Walt better, and the man was promised by Walt’s wife to talk to him and get him to go to confession, but the old stick-in-the-mud doesn’t want a bar of it. His bigotry continues when he sees the number of people going into the house next door and he mutters “How many swamp rats can you get in one room?”
Overall, Gran Torino is a film that deals with some tough themes, and you can feel Walt’s seething anger. In fact, the way he acts on impulse in a manner which could teach the out-of-control youth a thing or two makes me wish the next Grand Theft Auto title would let you control him instead of some of the chavs he’s attacking.
It’s also one of those films you can really feel yourself enjoying while it’s on. That said, some elements could be a bit fleshed out such as why Walt’s so hell bent on going to the lengths he does when stopping the gang, and also I thought the kid who plays Thao is incredibly annoying and can’t act to save his life.
The film is presented in 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen and looks as highly detailed as you’d expect a high-definition picture to look. There are plenty of outdoor daylight scenes, which serve the picture best, and look fantastic in their splendour. A few dark indoor shots also stand out nicely. For the record, I’m watching on a Panasonic 37″ Plasma screen with a Samsung BDP1500 player.
The sound comes in Dolby TrueHD, DTS 5.1 and Dolby Digital 5.1 formats, plus a PCM stereo one if you haven’t got any form of Dolby Digital/DTS equipment. I haven’t got a Dolby TrueHD setup, which allows for a 7.1 surround speaker setup, but then I haven’t got the room for that either, so DTS 5.1 will do nicely, sir. However, the audio within is mostly for dialogue and ambience and this isn’t a special FX film so there’s no complaints and it isn’t a demo disc, either.
The extras are surprisingly sparse for a Blu-ray disc given the amount of space available, but begin with a couple of behind-the-scenes featurettes: The Eastwood Way (19:17), in which we learn that the script wasn’t actually written for Eastwood as he had no intention of doing more acting, but then he didn’t think anyone else would be able to play it. And it also seems that quite a few people in the cast and crew all seem to know someone who can be a cranky, bigoted racist but also, like in the film, what happens when Clint’s character gets to know the Hmong people.
Manning the Wheel (9:23) is a look at the Americans’ love of cars, and the cast and crew all tell us which is their dream car to own. Finally, Gran Torino: More Than a Car (3:57) takes a closer look at the one in question.
A separate disc is included which contains a Bonus Digital Copy of the film which you can put into your PC and copy across to your PSP, Ipod, etc. I haven’t tried this myself but apparently these are low-res WMV files so aren’t going to be automatically compatible for everyone.
This Blu-ray disc also has some additional features accessible via BD-Live, which requires an internet connection:
- Music Video: Jamie Cullums music video performance of the original theme song from the motion picture Gran Torino.
- Gran Torino: Next Door: This is a 15 minute Hmong documentary. For Hmong Americans, Gran Torino marks a cinematic debut – the first time they have participated as characters, cast and crew in a major motion picture. The documentary takes a very personal look at the Hmong experience and their stories, both on and off the set.
- Additional Theatrical Trailers: I thought they’d be for this film. They’re not. In fact, there isn’t one for this film. Why not?
However, with so much space on the disc itself, why not just include them on there anyway? And every time I try to access these, it first tells me that my “persistent storage is full” and even though I logged in and told it to remember my details… I’ve still got to type them in again with an onscreen keyboard which is ridiculously fiddly with a remote control.
Apparently, my Samsung BDP1500 player has ‘Persistent Storage Management’, which is built-in internal flash memory capable of storing Blu-ray disc content such as bookmarks and other stuff, but why include whole featurettes? And for some unknown reason, while I can see this option in the player’s menu, I can’t access it. As such, I can’t view these features either. To confuse matters further, as I exit the BD-Live menu, it tells me my persistent storage is being deleted. Yes, nothing is still available to stream when I log in and go back.
A quick word, Warner – unless you have something that specifically just cannot be done without an internet connection, please include the extras just on the disc itself.
The main menu is simply static and silent and features Clint Eastwood standing outside his house. However, that didn’t happen the first time it played and I thought that this would be the first time ever I’d seen a disc that doesn’t have a main menu. Still, even when the film just starts playing, you can pause it and access all the menu features, even while the disc is playing – which is a feature of Blu-ray, and once the film ends it just cycles the Warning messages that Mr Big will come round to your house and feed your balls to the dog if you attempt to do anything untoward with it (I’m embellishing).
Aside from that, there’s a wealthy 29 chapters, and subtitles in many different languages as described above.
PICTURE QUALITY
SOUND QUALITY
EXTRAS
OVERALL 
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.