Gran Torino

- 3 minutes read - 440 words

Typically when you hear “coming of age” movies, you’ll most likely think of flicks such as Mean Girls, American Pie, Project X where the teenagers are up to some really cool, rad stuff but never in a million years would you have thought of Gran Torino. Partly because the movie wasn’t marketed as one and the plot has different age groups interacting with each other which makes it easy to pass off as just a regular drama genre. Neatly wrapped beneath all that drama, is the coming of age experience of Thao which the average teenage boy can relate to.

Thao Vang Lor
Thao Vang Lor

Thao, a 16-year-old boy, whose migrant family moves next door to Walt, a grumpy old man with no verbal filter1, has an interesting story arc that depicts what it’s like to go through the teenage experience across three axes which are not geographically locked2 and with less dramatic flair which is a deep contrast to the story arc of characters in mainstream coming of age movies;

  • Peer influence
  • Interest in girls
  • Guidance from an older figure

While all three matter, the first two can be influenced by the presence or absence of the third and Thao is a typical example of that. Before Thao met Walt, he was failing badly at the first two and he had no one to help him course correct. Walt challenged him to stand up for himself, put him to work and gave him a sense of purpose while helping him work up the courage to talk to girls. Essentially, this gave him a framework to use when dealing with social issues that tend to stump boys. Even though Walt was only briefly in Thao’s life, he made enough impact in his life to set him on the right path for the rest of his life.

If you got to this part, I’ll recommend watching the movie if you haven’t and if you have, a rewatch with this fresh perspective in mind wouldn’t be so bad. While Walt and Thao’s story thread was the focus of this write-up, there are other story threads which are quite hilarious and entertaining; Walt and Sue’s, Walt and the Reverend Father’s, Walt’s beef with his immediate family, including the grandkids!

To cap it off, here’s my favorite scene from the movie which is just downright hilarious:

  1. Some might argue he was racist, but I disagree. Walt was an asshole ready to rip into anyone, no exceptions. ↩︎

  2. Most movies in that genre are usually America-centric (which is expected), so a lot of the context might not transfer since they’re tightly coupled to a specific environment and culture. ↩︎