Gran Torino (+ BD-Live) [Blu-ray]

Gran Torino (+ BD-Live) [Blu-ray]
by Clint Eastwood

Gran Torino (+ BD-Live) [Blu-ray]

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Blu-ray details

Actor: Brian Haley, Christopher Carley, Clint Eastwood, Geraldine Hughes
Director: Clint Eastwood
Brand: Warner Brothers
Blu-ray: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1; French (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1; Spanish (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1; Portuguese (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1
Format: Color, Special Edition, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 2.40:1
Running Time: 116 minutes
Blu-ray Release Date: 2009-06-09
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: Warner Home Video
Product features:

Condition: New
Format: Blu-ray
Color; Special Edition; Widescreen; Subtitled

Blu-ray Reviews of Gran Torino (+ BD-Live) [Blu-ray]

Blu-ray Review: "Clint Eastwood's GRAN TORINO, "A White American Tragedy about Hmong People," reviewed in the eyes of a Combat Veteran
Summary: 5 Stars

"Clint Eastwood's GRAN TORINO, "A White American Tragedy
about Hmong People," reviewed in the eyes of a Combat Veteran" - 5 stars

I returned home from seeing Gran Torino feeling very emotional. I had to get these feelings off my chest and so is one's veteran opinion about the fictitious Walt Kowalsky, a Korean combat veteran. I feel I understood what the screenwriter of this fictional story was trying to teach us. A Chinese American's review seems to be most accurate: "You people [reviewers] are, as Walt Kowalski might say, are a bunch of jabbering dimwits."

For all the reviewers who would rewrite the screen, note that you did not produce this movie which is destined to become an Academy winner. Some of you expressed that the movie's hero should not have been about a White American but a hero of color - but isn't that in itself a little racist? The movie is about the story presented and if only the critics could write successfully, they might not be so critical. Many obvious facts can be easily assumed - so if I say that something is so in this review that was not said in the movie - it did not need saying - I know and many know- especially the vet.

Gran Torino also provides an introduction to the American people of a unique Ethnic group - the Hmong whom Walt at first hated but got to love as his only real family. The story is about an older Korean vet (like most) who came back home worked hard, retired, then lost his wife, and held on to good basic life values. Likely, he was never offered any treatment for his obvious chronic PTSD - so he has a few personality quirks. He has the eyes of many aging American combat veterans in a changing American environment. This movie perhaps is one of the most accurate reflections as to of what has happened to this country since the end of the Korean War.

Walt or Mr. Kowalsky, as he was for his Hmong neighbors, is a real American hero. We need more Walt's today in this country. The young Hmong hero (Thoa- Walt's aka "Toad") learns to use a calm head when communities face difficulties. He sets a good example as Walt helps reform him for his attempted theft of Walt's prized 1972 Gran Torino that Walt help build on a Detroit factory assembly line. Sure some Walt comments will get racial purists uptight. However, I feel many often see a racist under every bed as the problem while neglecting their main issues. Aren't the objected comments among many Walt-stereotyped blue-collared people more real than not? Walt did not retreat in war nor today in his community when its racial color changed. Although he could have moved away as encouraged by his children, he did not go to the suburbs where his former white neighbors and his children escaped. He stayed. So really isn't he much less a racist than the overwhelming majority of whites in this country who abandoned their former beautiful neighborhoods - now decaying - that have been overtaken by new ethnic peoples and the poor. Look at Boston, LA, Detroit and all the big cities! The movers and most critics do not have to say racist comments, their racism clearly is demonstrated.

So what if he was a cranky old (80 years old?) man often saying things that "good proper Americans" should not say. Our movies need to be about real people instead of an idealist pure people. The story shows he hated his new Hmong neighbors until he reluctantly discovered that they were good people and who became his new "family." As a 100% disabled combat Vietnam veteran (Special Operation Forces), I know that if you experienced what he did 55 years earlier (killing 13 enemy including a young 17 year old), your perceptions will differ little from Walt's. After his wife died, he rejected his young priest's many efforts to effect his late wife's request for him to confess his sins. He kept his War secrets to himself. He never discussed his War story even with his family - keeping his medals hid in a trunk in the basement. But he did share it for a few short moments with Thao and that is central to the movie's theme. We know that war takes a tolling affect on all warriors with a conscience- often with daily intrusions until death do them part. Many veterans perceptions to societal changes are easily different than non-veterans. Sometimes justifiably experienced in today's world when they see what is happening to their country for which they offered their supreme sacrifice.

The truth is that most Korean and Vietnam veterans have referred to their Asian enemy as gooks. Many combat vets are easily triggered emotionally even on the sight of Asians or recollections from that period of their life. After all, the military inspired within its combat troops that a gook was lower than a dog so that it was okay to kill him unless you allowed him to kill you. So within the soul of many combat veterans rest this disturbing feeling that is real in their perceptions and often nightly dreams. Don't we know that "war is hell" enough to emotionally to defeat even the best? Yet these veterans often came home often to an uncaring people who supposedly "were against war." But we should know that the strongest desires for peace always rest with the soldier. Wasn't Walt trying to teach Thoa and share his experience to avoid violence because it can hurt a person's soul for a very long time. Yet there comes a time after though when the proper person must take the risk.

Retired White auto blue-collar workers' comments are no doubt a reaction to their former enemies successful assumption of their American automobile manufacture as Americans adopted foreign cars and left their people unemployed. It does not seem right for those who won the war to lose their jobs to those we helped (Koreans) or defeated (Japanese, Germans, and Italians). If that was enough then new foreign people take over their neighborhoods. [Anyone want a house in Flint MI for a dollar?- there are many available.] How would you feel if your neighborhood turned into a dump because of this transition? Furthermore, unless you are blind, you must realize that minority Gangs throughout the US have an unduly affect on the poorer inner communities. These young gangsters are subjected to constant crime and use of drugs with little hope of escape. Most gangs are comprised- but not exclusively- today of young men of color. Yes, Walt saw Sue Lor's white male friend unable to stand up for her when abused by a small gang of black thugs. Walt fought the gang's destruction of his neighborhood and abuse of its Hmong peoples. If we only had more leaders and judges who stood against this encroachment crime into our society.

Walt knew that neither he nor the Hmong could not depend on the police to help. He realized that this fight was best for him. In the same way, many veterans realize that we or our allies should not depend on our military. This movie is reflects the USA's authoritative failures to not help our allies the Hmong then and today in their new US depressed communities. Look at the story of the Hmong people. Major General Vang Pao, their war hero who for two decades led the Hmong in their fight against North Vietnamese and Pathet Lao forces, repeated his comrades story, "If the United States won't help us, they should drop a bomb on us so we won't suffer any more." The story of the Hmong, a primitive people, has been a story of US neglect and betrayal. They were our most faithful and courageous allies during the Vietnam war. The USA paid and encouraged them to resist the advance of Communism in Southeast Asia. But the USA abandoned them and left them to a precarious fate when the Laotian domino collapsed in 1975. The USA government lied and denied this operation for years until Clinton Administrations confession that the USA was the primary instigating Hmong support in Southeast Asia wars. Today and after our confession, there still continues a genocide of thousands Hmong by the communist Lao government. Only a few have been relocated to US Hmong Communities. Most Hmong have been slaughtered. These are the same people who covertly made the Ho Chi Minh trail almost impassable for the NVA to resupply military equipment to kill our soldiers. Their actions saved innumerable lives (US and ARVN) from bloodbaths by the enemy. Don't we owe them more respect and support?

Are there similar stories going on today in America? Certainly, we need more Walt's to stand up and help the Hmong. One example of a White American accused of helping the Hmong is former Ranger Harrison Jack. The Federal Government today continues his and the Hmong betrayal. Our US Justice Department has indicted the retired Lieutenant Colonel Jack for a flimsy Sacramento Federal criminal case on violation of the Neutrality Act. Also indicted in the two year old continuing case are General Vang Pao and ten (10) other Hmong Americans. Colonel Jack led covert operations and worked with Hmong fighters during the Vietnam War. The federal indictment today describes him as the middle man between the Hmong defendants and their presumed arms dealer. Rangers are taught to never leave their comrades behind but to make every effort to save them and bring them home safe. What he is wrongly accused is exactly what the US Government should have been doing to resolve this overdue problem. The US Justice Department has ridiculously exaggerated and fabricated a case of entrapment at best against Colonel Jack and the Hmong "conspirators" to provide arms for those who have not given up the fight. Perhaps this criminal case will be an exciting future Hmong movie that Clint Eastwood will sponsor. Knowledge of the facts in this case should also be mandatory reading for Allies of any potential US military operations. They need to know the USA's propensity to abandon even their strongest supporters facing the worst situations. Such a movie would make all true blooded Americans disgusted with their government. It does not have to be fictional - the real story exists. We never should cause a genocide again.

In the end, Walt gave his life for these Hmong and this Hmong family could live free without intimidation by gangs. Knowing that he would soon die probably from cancer, he made one last sacrifice plan silently offering his life. His killing would do much more damage through the jailing of the Hmong gangsters for killing him. He knew precisely what he was doing. At last the young priest succeeds in securing Walt's late wife's request a confession. His confrontation of the Hmong gang would be his final act. He had made his peace with God with his confession. As he confronted Sue's and his attackers for their terrible actions, they shot him repeatedly as he reached in his pocket for his First US Army Cavalry (his combat unit) lighter to light a cigarette. He was unarmed. And his military memory laid in his dead hand. He knew that his life soon would be over anyway from cigarette cancer. What better way to go quickly? Or should he await the slow cancer verdict without any benefit to anyone? Perhaps he felt the Americans owed more to the Hmong for their faithful valor to the American Vietnam War combat soldiers. No doubt he had learned from the Hmong of their thousands who died when the United States abandoned them.

His sacrificial offering was for a purpose - similar to that service-people offer for us everyday. Certainly Walt would continue as one of a very few American hero's to the Hmong. This movie exemplifies the adage that "Old Soldiers Never Die."

Is there a moral that transcends this story even with its many racial or crude Walt comments? You betcha. There are many morals in this story that might someday be a classic study in schools. While fiction, it offers an excellent sociological and historic story of today's inner city and major issues as to what is going on in this society. The screenplay's author, Nick Schenk, deserves an OSCAR. The Hmong are still in need of American heroes instead of our chickens. Please, Mr. Eastwood, Give us a second Oscar winning movie about the Hmong's victory in Laos. Many Hmong still want to go home.

At the will reading, his children got nothing. Walt left most of his property to the Church of the young priest. The movie closes when Thoa Lor drives by a beautiful part of Detroit on Lake Michigan with his newly-inherited Walt's prized "1972 Gran Torino." Sue Lor said it right - "Walt Kowalski is a good man."

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Description of Gran Torino (+ BD-Live) [Blu-ray]

Synopsis:
Item Type: DVD Movie
Item Rating: R
Street Date: 06/09/09
Wide Screen: yes
Director Cut: no
Special Edition: no
LanguageENGLISH
Foreign Film: no
Subtitlesno
Dubbed: no
Full Frame: no
Re-Release: no
Packaging: Sleeve Please note: This supplier will be closed on 11/24, 11/25, 12/26, 1/2 for the holidays. The shipping cut off is 12/10 to try and have the products delivered by Christmas.

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