Gran Torino
Clint Eastwood has starred in numerous roles as a Polish-American, e.g. Tommy Novak in Pink Cadillac or tough cop Nick Pulovski in TheRookie. The crowning achievement of his "Polish roles" is certainly Walter Kowalski in Gran Torino. Kowalski is an intractable and caustic Korean War veteran who loves his exceptional car and his right to be left alone. His peace is interrupted by a group of Vietnamese Hmong immigrants. One of them, the teenage Thao, is forced by a group of criminals to steal Kowalski's car. Burglarizing Kowalski's home sets off a chain reaction. Eastwood is like wine - the older, the better, a fact confirmed by his role in Gran Torino, which was initially planned to be the final chapter about Harry Callahan (a kind of retired Dirty Harry). Fortunately, the idea transformed into a drama with a pinch of action. Grand Torino is primarily a story about overcoming prejudice, the birth of friendship and the power of traditional values worth dying for. It's a film about the belated flowering of a man's better nature, writes Roger Ebert in his review.
awards
AFI Awards 2009 – Movie of the Year; Cesar 2010 – Best Foreign Film; David di Donatello Awards 2009 – Best Foreign Film
Clint Eastwood
Clint Eastwood (b. 1930, San Francisco) is a living Hollywood legend. Steven Spielberg called him maybe the last real man in American film. He abandoned sports and military careers in favor of television, making his debut in the Rawhide TV series. From there, he ventured to Italy where, inspired by Sergio Leone, he created the man with no name for the Spaghetti Western Dollars Trilogy. After getting back stateside, he portrayed another now iconic character, inspector Harry Callahan, aka Dirty Harry. On the set of that film, he replaced the director, Don Siegel, in several scenes. The same year, he debuted as a director in his own right with the thriller Play Misty for Me, produced by his own Malpaso studio established in 1967. Up until Bird, Eastwood's directorial efforts (mainly Westerns and action movies) were primarily a successful reworking of genre schematics. Starting with the Charlie Parker biopic, Eastwood's seasoned work takes on qualities of realistic psychological cinema with a moralist streak. Winner of two Oscars for directing, the Irvin Thalberg prize and an honorary Golden Palm (2002).
Selected filmography
1971 Zagraj dla mnie, Misty / Play Misty for Me
1980 Bronco Billy
1992 Bez przebaczenia / Unforgiven
2000 Kosmiczni kowboje / Space Cowboys
2003 Rzeka tajemnic / Mystic River
2006 Sztandar chwały / Flags of Our Fathers
2006 Listy z Iwo Jimy / Letters from Iwo Jima
2014 Jersey Boys
