January in central Florida can be this way – sunny, but cool with a biting wind. If we were home in southwest Ohio, we’d think this day was a gift from the gods – a break from the dreary winter grayness. But it’s Florida, and we came here because we wanted to wear t-shirts and shorts and play golf and ride our bikes. But not today.
Today is a day for the movies. A matinee with a senior discount. The worst part is that I don’t even have to ask the pretty young thing selling tickets for the discount. She just looks at me and knows.
The choice of movies is easy: Gran Torino. Because we have been told it is an excellent film, and because our first new car was a 1971 Ford Torino. It was pumpkin yellow with a black vinyl top. We bought it the same year we bought our first house and had our first child. I was making $280 a week, plus several overtime hours each week at time-and-a-half. We were in Fat City.
If you’ve wasted much time going to movies or watching cable TV, after about fifteen minutes you knew pretty much how the movie was going to play out. The acting was good, and the ending was a bit of a surprise. It’s the kind of movie that you’ll want to talk about afterward. So go see it.
Clint Eastwood is the star. He’s about a hundred years old now, but still capable of kicking some serious ass, which he does. Sort of.
If you saw Million Dollar Baby, you know this guy. Tough old dude, stays within himself (as the baseball players say.) He’s lost his beloved wife and is tormented by some ancient secret, some terrible wound.
In Million Dollar Baby, he reluctantly coaches a girl boxer. In Gran Torino, he reluctantly comes to the rescue of an extended Hmong family that moved in next door, one of many that have taken over his Midwestern working-class neighborhood.
You can’t help comparing this Clint Eastwood with the Clint Eastwood who was kicking butt before those Torinos were built – the Clint Eastwood of those spaghetti Westerns like The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. That Clint Eastwood had the same stub of a smoke in his mouth and the same wrinkled squint in his eye. But he could blow away about a dozen bad guys before you could get a handful of over-priced popcorn from the box to your mouth. Put the Young Clint in Gran Torino, and the ending would be far different.
I guess that’s really not fair. Just like we can’t compare the Young Elvis with the Old Elvis.
Mentally, I begin to compare the Cub Reporter in the days when he was an actual cub, making $280 a week and driving that pumpkin yellow Torino, with the Cub Reporter-turned Snow Bird you know today.
Probably not a fair comparison either. They are different people.
-By Midwest Bureau Cub Reporter Paul Knue
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