FemaleFirst.co.uk: DVD: Gran Torino [Blu-ray] [2008]

Gran Torino [Blu-ray] [2008]
enlarge	Director: Clint Eastwood Actor: Clint Eastwood Studio: Warner Home Video Category: DVD List Price: ~~£26.99~~ Buy New: £12.98 as of 23/11/2009 02:52 GMT details You Save: £14.01 (52%) New (7) Used (4) from £9.90 Seller: Amazon.co.uk Rating: 21 reviews Sales Rank: 655 Format: PAL Languages: English (Audio Description), English (Original Language), English (Subtitles For The Hearing Impaired), German (Subtitles For The Hearing Impaired), English (Unknown), English (Subtitled), Chinese (Subtitled), Danish (Subtitled), Dutch (Subtitled), Finnish (Subtitled), French (Subtitled), German (Subtitled), Italian (Subtitled), Korean (Subtitled), Norwegian (Subtitled), Spanish (Subtitled), Swedish (Subtitled), French (Dubbed), German (Dubbed), Italian (Dubbed), Spanish (Dubbed) Rating: Suitable for 15 years and over Media: Blu-ray Number Of Discs: 1 Running Time: 116 Minutes Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2 Dimensions (in): 6.6 x 5.4 x 0.6 MPN: BDY22508 EAN: 5051892004282 ASIN: B001Q3LSYW Theatrical Release Date: 2008 Release Date: June 29, 2009 Availability: Usually dispatched within 24 hours


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Editorial Reviews: Product Description Clint Eastwood, Christopher Carley, Bee Vang, Brian Haley, Geraldine Hughes, Dreama Walker, Brian Howe, John Carroll Lynch, William Hill, Ahney Her Director: Clint Eastwood

Customer Reviews: Showing reviews 1-5 of 21 1 2 3 4 5 Next » Amazing!!! March 17, 2009 C. Cosgrave (Manchester) 18 out of 22 found this review helpful I went to see this film at the cinema and when it ended i would have happily have sat through it again. For a couple of minutes after it finished nobody moved and all I could think was wow!. It really is a good film and I have heard some reviewers say that some of the performances of the minor charactors were not great but I felt that I was watching real people in a real situation. Clint Eastwood is not a young man any more but I had no trouble believing that he was a hard man who could still instill the fear of God. I can't wait for it to come out on DVD so that I can watch it again. It's just what we need, a real modern day hero. Clint Eastwood was born to play Walt Kowalski in his last role as an actor and one of his best! June 29, 2009 Dragonlord (Cornwall) 7 out of 9 found this review helpful Gran Torino is a hard hitting film in which Clint Eastwood learns to like his Hmong immigrants neighbours from Southwest Asia by defending them from a local gang. I found this to be both touching and moving because at the start of the film he hated his neighbours. The role of Walt Kowalski is very much in the same vain as his Dirty Harry character. Gran Torino is extremely well acted by all and the directing by Mr Eastwood is to his normal very high standards. I found the story really gripped me and also shocked me at times especially the ending. I feel a little sad that this is Clint Eastwoods last film as an actor and I am glad that it is a most excellent film too because at least he goes out on a high. If you are a fan of Clint Eastwood then Gran Torino really is a must buy film on blu-ray in which it looks great too. "He's still living in the '50s..." March 6, 2009 DangermouseZilla (Doncaster, Yorkshire, UK.) 20 out of 29 found this review helpful There's little dialogue from Clint to start with, but with the gritted teeth, the growl, and the icy stare - you're left in no doubt as to what's going through his mind. The tone is set from the start; Walter - a proud man, abrupt with a seemingly impenetrable façade - is now alone in life. A bitter old man with kids who are the product of his affectionless past, they find it difficult to approach him and when they do speak to him it's awkward. br / br /Walter's quiet life of cold beers on his terrace are disrupted when he receives well meaning, but unwelcome attention after protecting his own property and inadvertently becoming a local hero. His self imposed solitude starts to wane as he becomes more involved with his Hmong neighbours. His racist views are enlightened by them, particularly young siblings Thao and Sue. In many ways they may end up his salvation from a bitter lonely life with only his tormenting past as company. br / br /Tao is vulnerable and looks up to Walt, whereas Sue responds to his racist jibes with pluck and wit - something appreciated by the gnarly pensioner, and something which allows him to see past the skin colour of his neighbours. He finds warmth he's not initially comfortable with, but he finds himself reluctantly enjoying it. br / br /For an old emotionless racist - Eastwood as both director and actor manages to get some humanity under that cold exterior. There are glimpses of humour and regret - even humility. We see that much of his anger is aimed at himself for his actions during the war - he's haunted by his past experience. Age is dealt with by showing us how Walt is perceived by some as an old man rather than simply; a man. It's during one of these scenes with his son and daughter-in-law, and their patronising (but good intentioned) efforts to sell him the idea of a retirement home that we see Clint's minimal dialogue acting in action. A scene which could have several minutes of argument is condensed to a quickly edited view of them being evicted from the house. A lot of work has gone into making sure that the complexities of Walter are always well communicated without being unravelled. br / br /The fear the community has over violence, drugs, and gang crime hushes them into a squalid acceptance of it - they need someone to stand out, someone to symbolise the power of the little man in the middle of it all. br / br /Walter will win you over - you still might not like him, you certainly won't agree with many of his views, but you'll come to see him as a character with depth rather than an obvious device to steer the plot. Not many films do that these days, Hollywood tends to like leaving nothing to the imagination and making things a bit, well, formulaic. Walt isn't a stock character who could have been lifted from one of many films, he's his own man, he feels real - and that's his appeal. br / br /In a nutshell: A film about the little people in a big world. People who don't mix and allow resentment to grow until their lives overlap to reveal that they're not that different after all. Gran Torino isn't a cheesy film about a man who has an epiphany and ends up a totally different man, he's not the Ebeneezer Scrooge of Michigan - instead we get an articulate man who has some undesirable attitudes, but despite his years of experience - he still has room to develop. Gran Torino is a great film which ultimately shows us that there's life in the old dog yet, and that individuals can achieve so much more when they work as a community. Grand Finale October 21, 2009 OEJ (England) 10 out of 14 found this review helpful This is a review of the Blu-Ray DVD Gran Torino. br / br /First of all I did not at any time think 'Wow! What a stunning Blu-Ray picture in 1080P !' That's because from start to finish it looked like a normal standard-def DVD. The extras and options are good however, with spoken language options English (inc Dolby TrueHD), English descriptive narration, French, Dutch, Italian and Castellano. Subtitles excellent - English, French, German, Italian, Castellano, Dutch, Danish, Finnish, Norwegian, Swedish, Chinese and Korean. There is the facility to set up an account with Warner Bros BD-Live, offering on-line up-to-date movie trailers, further information about the Gran Torino film among much more, all of which was easy to do with a WiFi enabled PS3. br / br /The 5-star rating applies mainly to the film itself rather than its technical features. You've got to hand it to Clint Eastwood, whose last acting role this apparently was. This is his 66th film as an actor, and his 34th (but not last) as a director. Yet he's 79 years of age, which is awesome considering he's more than doing the numbers - no, this is a fine piece of acting by any standard and he is as magnetic to watch as ever. In this quirky but realistic story he plays Walt Kowalski, a grumpy, humourless, bigoted Polish American, recently widowed and still haunted by memories of the Korean War more than half a century earlier. He worked at Ford in Detroit most of his working life, and probably his proudest possession is his 1972 Ford Torino. When the film first came out about a year ago I had the impression that he was a racist, but that isn't accurate; he doesn't really like anybody, not even his own sons and grandchildren, and just wants to be left alone in peace, with his labrador as his only welcome companion. His next-door neighbours are of Hmong descent, a culture from a mixture of the Asian countries of Vietnam, Laos and Thailand. One of them, a young man called Thao, is bullied by a mainly Hispanic gang into stealing the Torino, which is when an unlikely relationship between Kowalski and Thao begins. br / br /This is a character-driven contemporary drama from start to finish, deliberately old-school in keeping with the personality of Kowalski himself, and while it is chock-full of expletives it is nevertheless frequently very funny as well, with most of the laughs coming from Eastwood's ironic, dead-pan expressions or grumbles, even if he doesn't look as if he feels like laughing himself. It has almost nothing to do with racism at all, instead it is a mildly uplifting tale of a man acting as mentor and father-figure to a youngster in danger of taking the wrong path in life. Eastwood occasionally displays some Dirty Harry-esque moments with his growly threats to get off of his lawn, whether this is a deliberate parody of himself isn't clear but it's also one of the few examples of him slipping out of the unique character that is Walt Kowalski, a role he fills to near perfection throughout. As he has done countless times throughout his career, Eastwood carries this film (despite a very good supporting cast) and in spite of his advancing years he's still very much the powerful leading man he has always been. Very few actors have equalled him for consistency and strength over such a long period - he's been at the top for well over 50 years - and I wonder if anyone will match him in the future. br / br /In summary, an amusing but serious story, entertaining and thought-provoking, and a fitting closure to a magnificent acting career. Old Eastwood June 26, 2009 Michael J. Day (UK) 3 out of 5 found this review helpful I'm not really surprised at the couple people who just gave this 1 stars and didn't even justify their reasons why they'd done so, It's stupid to give a film of this quality 1 star, it's a laugh to give it 2, and it's a very debatable 3. br / br /This film was fantastic, Clint Eastwood plays Walt Kowalski, an old korean war veteran who's become detatched from his siblings, and has just had a loss in the family. The story focuses around Walt and a teenager who tries to steal his prized possession: a 1972 Gran Torino. br / br /I'm not going to go into detail on the story, but I can say Clint fills the role of Walt Kowalski fantastically, it's a very enjoyable film and I highly recommend you see it. Showing reviews 1-5 of 21 1 2 3 4 5 Next »

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