One of the great hooks in a movie for me is a miserable, anti-social git proving that they're completely in touch with their humanity and it's just the world around them that's astray. This had this quality in spades. It put me in mind of Leon, one of my all-time favourites.
Things I loved about it:
1) Eastwood's growl. Well-employed, if a little nasty :)
2) The way the priest was portrayed. Perfectly balanced, in his intentions and his ineffectuality.
3) The street scene that he watches from his truck, then gets up and sorts out. What you like to imagine you'd be able to do in those circumstances.
4) The attitude and approach of the female lead (back to this later)
5) The funny (and spot on) approach to manning-up Thao. I could do an A-level language lesson just on those scenes. In fact, I might :)
6) The beautifully judged weighing of tensions towards the end (Eastwood is a great director!)
The ending is powerful; there's a dark turn, but it's the one aspect of the film I was less than happy with. In many ways I liked what was done, but for me Thao's sister was as important as Thao, and I felt a narrowing as it ultimately became a role-model movie. I was left with the sense that in movie terms she'd been sacrificed to some masculine greater good, and that bothered me given how strong the character was.
I still love it though.
I too loved this film. I sometimes feel alone with a slightly old-fashioned sense of honour and I love to see people - even fictional ones - that live up to how I think things should be done.
ReplyDeleteI loved Clint Eastwood's character in a way that I didn't think I would based on what I had heard about the film beforehand. I could put up with his initial racism in the same way you put up with it from your grandparents. Fundamentally, he had lived his life in a world that proved it was full of people you'd rather see self-combust. One of the things I loved was the ballsy way that Thao's sister completely ignored his bullshit and frogmarched him into her family and into acceptance, despite his utter resistance to the experience.
However, what I loved the most was that he was truly someone who was able to Do Things To Make It Right. He was old but he was a proper badass, with an absolute strength, confidence and sense of his own capacity to see justice done.
I agree that the situation with Thao's sister was massively unpleasant, but the story needed something that heinous as a catalyst for the end. She was a person with absolute faith in her own right to be there and to be her own person, and the theft of that was heart-breaking but essential.
At the end, the clear demonstration of the difference between Thao's outrage, youth and ineffectuality and Eastwood's quietly simmering anger, experience and cunning was beautifully done. It brings a lump to my throat now.
I love a good hero, even if he's a foul tempered old motherfucker.
I think this is going to be Film of the Year :D
ReplyDeleteI wish they'd do a proper Dirty Harry retired film :)
ReplyDelete