First Hit: I was put off and turned off by the continual use of derogatory terms use to describe people and their race.
In the past 10 years Clint Eastwood usually doesn’t miss with his direction and acting, however in this film I think he missed in both cases.
His character Walt has lost his wife and lives alone in a house he’s lived in for a very long time. The neighborhood is changing as families of Asians are moving in and as they do, new patterns and behaviors begin imposing their presence in Walt’s life.
Walt is grumpy and harboring deep pain from killing people while in Korea. When a gang of young Hmong’s start beating the young gentle boy next door because he isn’t part of their gang, Walt pulls out his Army rifle and threatens to blow their heads off.
At this point in the film, the whole thing switches to a form of Dirty Harry where Eastwood imposes his tough guy for righteousness right and wrong. Of course Eastwood becomes the hero of the neighborhood and there are funny scenes of him, at first, refusing their offerings of food to accepting them.
The real underlying story is Walt dealing with his past and how he decides to atone for his actions of killing.
Except to age him, Eastwood did little to stretch beyond his Dirty Harry character. Christopher Carley was really strong as the young parish priest Father Janovich. Additionally Bee Vang and Ahney were very good as the neighbor kids Thao and Sue respectively. The thing that turned me off along the group of Asians sitting behind me was the constant stream of derogatory words streaming out of Eastwood’s mouth. I think he could have easily made his point and kept the character within the character without the overkill.
Overall: This wasn’t a very good film, although watchable, the stream of insults and Dirty Harry orientation made it less of a film than it could have been.