Since assuming helming control as well as acting in his work, Eastwood has taken an extended look at violence and its consequences, and his films feel like an apology for all of the acts he committed in star-making roles like “Dirty Harry” Callaghan or the steely cowboy in Sergio Leone’s spaghetti western trilogy (A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly). It’s notable that in the Oscar-winning Unforgiven, Eastwood’s ageing gunslinger character showed no bravado whatsoever; instead, he was a craggy, scarred loner, tormented by thoughts of all the bodies strewn across his Wild West past.

So it was a shock to see in Eastwood’s latest directorial effort, Gran Torino, the weathered movie icon brandishing a gun and snarling “Get off my lawn!” in the same menacing voice he used to deliver the line “Do you feel lucky? Well, do ya, punk?!!" all those years ago. Could it be that, as he approaches his 80th year, Eastwood is regressing?

When we first meet Clint’s character, Walt Kowalski, he’s at his wife’s funeral. As he watches his sons and grandchildren in the church pews, all he can do is emit a low, bulldog growl, while scrunching his face into the grimace of a man who’s disgusted by everything he sees. At the reception that follows, it’s clear Walt, still sporting the military haircut he favoured in the Korean War, is a crusty old curmudgeon with anger-management issues. He grunts at the sight of his son’s foreign-made car, insults the well-meaning Catholic priest who invites him to confession and slams a door in the face of his Asian neighbour. At first, Walt’s crankiness is played for laughs – the film seems like a mildly entertaining version of Grumpy Old Men peppered with lots of racial epithets. However, Eastwood and first-time scriptwriter Nick Schenk are far smarter than that. When the neighbour’s son, a fearful teenager named Thao (Bee Vang), makes a failed attempt to steal Walt’s prized 1972 Gran Torino in a gang-initiation dare, the film switches gear and speeds off in a fresh, surprising direction.

Walt hates the boy, just as he hates all of the Hmong (an ethnic group from south east Asia) who’ve gradually moved in to his once-white Detroit neighbourhood. But when he sees a bunch of gang members harassing Thao, Walt is so irked by the “gooks” invading his turf that he grabs his shotgun and embraces the chance for some chest-puffing confrontation. The moment is electric, but also illuminating: while the man with the gun exuded cool and power in the 1970s, Walt’s hair-trigger response feels slightly creepy and almost pathetic. 

After he successfully fends off the gang, he becomes an unlikely hero to his Hmong neighbours, who offer plates of home cooking and help with household chores as thanks. Though Walt is resistant at first, the family’s kindness comes at the right time, since his own sons are too busy to take his calls, and would rather see him ensconced in a retirement home. What follows is an awakening of sorts for the old man. Walt steps gingerly into the Hmong community — first eating their food, then receiving a reading from a shaman. He eventually strikes up something resembling a friendship with both Thao and his spitfire older sister Sue (Ahney Her). Once he has begun to assume a more fatherly role with these two teenagers, the gruff racist is forced to admit that he has more in common with his neighbours than he does with his own long-alienated offspring.

Walt, though, is still a haunted man, and when Gran Torino accelerates toward its explosive outcome, he must utter a confession. Like everything else in this subtle, thought-provoking film, it doesn’t arrive in the form you’d expect, and it’s exhilarating to watch Eastwood tear his tough-guy persona to shreds. This astonishing scene – amongst the finest acting Eastwood’s ever done — is a condemnation of violence so heartfelt, it’ll leave any filmgoer expecting a “go ahead, make my day” pay-off feeling red-faced with shame.

Gran Torino is the director’s most complete film, in terms of articulating the themes he’s been gradually moving towards for the past 20 years, providing all the morality and grief  which was missing in Eastwood’s earlier work.