The Gospel According to Gran Torino

Walt is doomed.  When Clint Eastwood's Gran Torino opens, his character is recently widowed, bitter, foul-mouthed, violent, borderline alcoholic and very sick.  His kids don't really care about him and he thinks they are self-absorbed and ridiculous.  But, maybe the worst part of it is that he hates his neighbors.  Like Dirty Harry, Walt is isn't a "racist," he hates everybody, but as a Korean War vet, he especially hates southeast Asians who remind him of the things he did there.  He is destined to die, coughing up blood on the floor of his garage, feeling guilty and alone.  And no one will care.  Let me try to lay this out without giving too much away.

His fresh young priest tries to get him to come to confession, but Walt constantly and vehemently rejects him.  The priest character is great.  Initially, one is inclined to feel about him exactly as Walt does, but as the movie develops, we see that he is also 3 dimensional and has something to offer.

Walt's life begins to change when the son of his Hmong neighbors gets in gang trouble.  In a classic "Dirty Harry as Grumpy Old-Man" scene, Walt inadvertently saves this young man by wielding his M-1 and growling "Get off my lawn!"  The Hmong community responds by showering him with gifts.  Eventually, the older sister Su befriends Walt, seeing past his tough-guy bluster and sort of integrates this racial-slur-spewing crust of a person into her family.

The major text of the film becomes a commentary on manhood.  Walt ends up mentoring Tao, the teenage boy next door and trying to "man him up" in blue-collar Detroit "Greatest Generation" style.  Though his version of manhood is basically comic-relief at this point, Tao eventually does become more confident and assertive and Walt becomes more warm and human.  Still, he turns to violence to try to stop the gang-intimidation and learns a lesson he should have learned in Korea.  Violent begets violence.

Ultimately, Walt has to stop the cycle of violence and he lands on a creative solution.  He goes to confession to fulfill his wife's last wishes.  Then he confesses the things that have TRULY haunted him to Tao.

He drives over to the gang-house and calls them out.  They emerge, brandishing their pistols.

He talks tough for a minute or two until all the eyes of the neighborhood are on the scene.  They wait, and so do we, for Walt to rain down lead-vengeance on these neighborhood terrorists.  Through lips clenched on a cigarette, Walt snarls, "Got a light? (pause) I've got a light!" Then he enacts his plan.  

What does he do?  Oddly enough, Walt sort of pulls a WWJD.

Throughout this film, Walt is the hero saving the Hmong family, but at the end, it seems clear that they have saved him from dying alone, bitter, uncared-for and uncaring.  

Walt has changed, though his language still leaves a great deal to be desired.  

He loves his neighbors as himself.  He is honest about his pain.  He is reconciled.  

In the last moments of the film, he is literally an icon of Christ. 

He is very nearly a new creation.

How many of us can say the same?

In Ephesians 2-3, Paul says that the mystery of Christ is when Christ on the cross broke down the wall of hostility between Jews and Gentiles and made them one.  It is a work of reconciliation.  

When someone goes from hating his neighbors, to loving them, God is at work.  It may not be the whole picture, but it is a picture of salvation and redemption.