By Nicole
In “Gran Torino,” Walt Kowalski, played by Clint Eastwood, is an
unhappy, tough, and prejudiced Korean War veteran who is disgusted with
the shifting landscape of his Detroit neighborhood from primarily white
“American” families to more recent immigrant Asian families. After
Thao, the teenage son of the Asian family next door, tries to steal
Walt’s beloved Gran Torino as the result of gang pressure, Thao works
for Walt to regain his family’s honor by making reparations in the form
of physical labor. Walt forms an unlikely and close bond with Thao and
his family. Throughout the film, the gang tries to force Thao to join
them. Ultimately, when Thao continues to reject the gang, its members
rape and assault Thao’s sister and drive by the family’s home firing
guns at it. Ultimately, Walt sacrifices his own life to ensure that the
gang members will be charged with murder and put in prison (he has a
terminal illness so the sacrifice is plausible).
This film raises a number of issues that are discussed in Professor
Thane Rosenbaum’s “The Myth of Moral Justice” and in his course Human
Rights, the Holocaust and the Law. The film underscores the failure of
the legal system to recognize anything but injury to the physical body
and even then only with tangible, objective evidence. It also
highlights the limitations of our legal penalties. Walt, who despite
his gruff demeanor and painfully racist dialogue, has a clear sense of
right and wrong and of honor and respect. He recognizes that the police
and the law will not be able to take appropriate action to right the
wrongs that have been done to Thao and his family by the local gang, and
he shoulders the burden of protecting them himself. Although by the end
of the film Thao and his family have been physically harmed, and the law
recognizes their injuries, when the injuries were nothing but verbal
abuse and harassment, the police could do nothing. Even when the injury
escalates to the physical, the police do not do much to help. Walt
realizes that in order to exact a strong enough remedy, there needs to
be more injury and clearer evidence; he takes justice into his own hands
in the only plan that he thinks is feasible.
As Walt, unarmed, is being gunned down by the gang, with neighbors
watching (witnesses for a trial) and the police approaching (more
witnesses and evidence), there is a feeling of disappointment and wrong
that it is Walt dying and not the gang members. Coupled with that is
the knowledge that, while Thao’s family may be safe for some period of
time if the gang members are convicted and put in jail, the legal system
will not be able to provide the family with any sort of spiritual
remedy; it can only lock up the gang members that shot Walt. No
punishment that our criminal justice system metes out will be sufficient
for men who inflicted so much harm and devastated a family. There is
some sense that Walt, in life and in death, has given Thao and his
family back a little of the honor and dignity they lost at the hands of
the gang, by doing the right thing and by giving his Gran Torino to Thao
(in lieu of giving it to his own spoiled relatives). However, the role
of the justice system is alarmingly insufficient and weak.
The film is an example of the failure of our legal system to intervene
until far too much harm and devastation has occurred. Professor
Rosenbaum accurately highlights the inability of the court to recognize
emotional and spiritual harms. I would ask, based on this film, why it
is that our system cannot do more to help individuals earlier, before so
much damage is done. Perhaps the legal system could embrace more of the
moral sphere and takprevention is worth a pound of cure.”
