Eastwood misses the mark this time

-- You can say one thing for Clint Eastwood: He has amazing arms.

The man is 78, and his arms are muscular and strong. If he had to, he looks as if he could easily lift a small Volkswagen. They speak volumes, those arms, of the determination of the man to whom they belong.

Ordinarily, after watching an Eastwood movie, we would be talking about his many talents as a filmmaker. But the only thing that impresses about "Gran Torino" are his guns.

Coming from the man who most recently made the fascinating "Changeling" and the absolutely masterful "Letters From Iwo Jima," "Gran Torino" is a huge step backward. It's simplistic, obvious and clichéd. And even the acting is not up to par.

Eastwood stars as Walt Kowalski, the crankiest man in Detroit. He hates everything and everybody, except his barber and maybe some of the guys down at the VFW hall. Everything he sees disappoints him, including his sons, who aren't interested in him, his daughter-in-law, who wants to send him to a nursing home, and his granddaughter, who can't wait for him to die so she can inherit some of his stuff.

Actually, he has a point about his family -- although some of the fault has to be his own for raising themthat way.

He hates everyone who doesn't look like him, so the Korean War veteran is doubly peeved when his next-door neighbors turn out to be Asian. They annoy him at first, but when their teenage son is threatened by thugs, Walt shows up with his Army-issued rifle. Suddenly, he is a hero to the Hmong community, an honor he does not want.

If you can't see where this is headed, writer Nick Schenk lays it out rather too baldly: At a party at the neighbors' house, Walt looks in a mirror and says to us (no one else is there) that he has more in common with them -- though he uses a racial slur to describe them -- than with his own family.

Walt is an equal-opportunity racist, and he uses language that is meant to be salty, but instead it sounds contrived. So over-the-top are his beliefs that he makes Archie Bunker seem subtle in comparison.

In the role, Eastwood sneers a lot and snarls, but the character nearly always seems put on; he doesn't feel real, as if the actor cannot convincingly play a character so foreign to his own thinking. Still, he is far more comfortable in the role than Bee Vang and Ahney Her, who play the teenagers next door. The parts are absolutely vital, and the acting is stiff -- it is possible they were chosen for their ability to speak Hmong.

Schenk's story template is more than familiar, though the moral question at the end is fairly new. But one new idea turns out not to be enough on which to hang a movie.

Eastwood has certainly directed more than his share of great films, from "Unforgiven" to "The Bridges of Madison County." "Gran Torino" is not up to his standards.