Gran Torino Review/diversity

Gran Torino Review/diversity

I question whether I would have seen this movie in the same way if I had not been in this class. Watching the movie under the context that it’s for a diversity class opened my eyes to the prejudices that occurred. I watched it thinking what a perfect film for a diversity class, it seemed like it was made for it.   Gran Torino was such a wonderful, but also disturbing film.   I found myself laughing and crying. You grow to like Clint Eastwood’s character, who at first you see as an angry old selfish racist man. By the end you see him as quite the opposite as he grows as a person and opens up his heart and his mind.   Something I found interesting was the minority groups going against each other, as if the groups don’t face enough as it is they have turned the hate onto each other.   I learned about the Hmong culture, and how close they are as well as the struggles they face. The characters Sue and Toa didn’t have a father figure, which seemed to be common and something that the males struggle with so they seek out the male connections in gangs.   At one point in the movie after watching the gang members drive by Walter says about Toa, “That kid doesn’t have a chance”.
Walter, Clint Eastwood’s character is a Vietnam War vet, and he sees all of his neighbors who are Hmong immigrants from Southeast Asia, as Koreans and uses slang discriminatory words to describe them, even to their faces.   Walter’s neighbor’s elder female said to Walter in Hmong something about him still being there when all the white people have moved away, she says, “Why are you still here?” and refers to him as, “rooster”.   She hates him as much as he hates her. After Walter’s wife dies at the start of the film the priest, a young man who Walt doesn’t have much respect for in the beginning tells Walt he promised his wife he would look after him, something interesting he says to Walt is, “we are not in Korea anymore Mr. Kowalski”. At the beginning the neighbor boy,...