The Secret of Social Harmony

The Secret of Social Harmony

It the first post of my "Dangerous Victims" trilogy of essays, I quote from Grim Beorn's Grim's Hall:

The secret of social harmony is simple: Old men must be dangerous.

I just got back from seeing Clint Eastwood's latest, Gran Torino, and Clint illustrates this fact with authority in this film.

My (Japanese) wife was shocked by the racist epithets fired at a machine-gun pace throughout the film, but agreed, it's a damned good movie. It's also the most un-PC film since Blazing Saddles, which should be enough to recommend it to my readers.

Apparently Eastwood has announced that, at 78, Gran Torino will be his last acting effort. If so this film, I think, suitably completes the cycle of his acting career. He started out doing spaghetti Westerns, slinging lead and gratuitous violence. This proceeded into his stint as Dirty Harry Callahan, doing much the same, only with a badge. But in his later films, Pale Rider, Unforgiven, and now Gran Torino, he has shown that violence is not something that should be treated lightly, but is something that still has its place even in "civil society" and that there is a difference between "violent and predatory" and "violent but protective."

Go see it.