Gran Torino

Clint Eastwood is five months younger than my dad. And in many ways, he reminds me very much of my old man. No, Hirst Senior hasn't ever taken a .44 Magnum ("the most powerful handgun in the world; it'd blow your head clean off") to any delinquent punks and asked them to make his day (sadly), but both men have similar codes of honour and respect, things that seem positively old-fashioned nowadays. They even look slightly similar, more so as they grow older. (My brother, by comparison, looks like Kurt Russell. Sadly, I'm the non-movie star of the family.) Obviously though, my dad is way cooler than Clint.

As a result of this connection, the announcement that Gran Torino was to be Clint's last film as an actor made me extra sad. (At least he'll still direct - and is currently working on his Nelson Mandela biopic with a well-cast Morgan Freeman.) From my early teens (and maybe even before), The Man With No Name has been part of my cultural landscape. I was once given the job of hosting and linking a performance of short plays in high school, and did so by mimicking a number of popular characters of the day (with no doubt terrible impersonations; though the audience was kind) including Dirty Harry (plus Harry Enfield's 'Loadsamoney' and Rod Serling... I can't remember the others, though Shatner was probably among them). Clint Eastwood is an icon, a star who lifts the quality of any picture - even ones with dodgy scripts or premises. I truly believe there's no such thing as a bad Clint Eastwood movie, which is one more reason to mourn his retirement from acting.

Still, if he must, Gran Torino is a fine way to bow out. A knowing return to the tough guy roles that made him famous, it's wonderful to see the Eastwood sneer in action one last time; and for the most part he's picked a part that gives longtime fans exactly what they want. There are times when the script is a little heavy-handed (do we really need our hero to observe out loud that he has more in common with his Chinese neighbours than his own estranged children?) but there are more than enough true Clint moments to make up for that. Better still, the movie manages to be both funny and touching - in places achingly sad. It's an amazing performance from Eastwood, and a unique one. I doubt this film would have worked with any other actor.

Well, no, I take that back. My dad could have pulled it off. Particularly the scene where Clint struggled to lift a heavy freezer up the steps from his basement rather than admitting he needed help... or in his showdown with the baby-faced pastor Father Janovich, "I think you're an overeducated 27-year-old virgin who likes to hold the hands of superstitious old ladies and promise them everlasting life". Seeing that, I couldn't help but remember the time I had to drive my dad into hospital after he almost cut off his thumb with a circular saw... Sitting in a wheelchair, white as a sheet and on the verge of passing out from blood loss, he still found the energy to express horror at the junior doctor who arrived to stitch him up. "But he's just a BOY!" he cried. Clint would have been proud.