Directed by Clint Eastwood
Rated R
(Three Stars)

As an actor and as a director, Clint Eastwood has always been defined by his edges. Everything about him is chiseled and gruff; he seems decidedly uncomfortable with softness of any sort.

The opening scenes of his latest film, “Gran Torino,” greet us with few surprises. Eastwood plays Walt Kowalski, a retired autoworker with a colorful racist vocabulary. Everything he sees displeases him: his fading blue-collar neighborhood that is rapidly being overtaken by immigrants and gangs, the ethnic Hmong family that move in next door, even his own family who would like nothing better than to pack him off to a retirement home where they would only have to deal with him on the occasional holiday. The one exception is his pristine 1972 Gran Torino that he keeps locked in his garage.

Walt’s ambitions are essentially defensive. He just wants the rest of the world to keep off his property and leave him in peace. Thao (Bee Vang), the teenage boy next door, has similar goals. He’s a bright, sensitive kid who likes to garden and is good in school. In this tough neighborhood he’s a target for every gang-banger who catches him alone on the street.

When the local Hmong gang tries to bully Thao into joining they make the mistake of letting the confrontation spill over into Walt’s yard. Walt chases them off with his old military rifle, intent on protecting his own yard, not Thao. But his neighbors see him as a hero.

Through a series of misadventures, large and small, his neighbors pull Walt into their lives and he finds himself taking Thao under his wing.

These are themes we’ve seen before in Eastwood’s films. He likes to set his stories in tough working-class neighborhoods where life is more likely to crush dreams than nurture them. Walt is much like Frankie Dunn in “Million Dollar Baby” and his relationship to Thao is similar to that of Hillary Swank’s Maggie Fitzgerald.

Eastwood once again explores what happens when a hard, isolated man is forced to open up by a relationship he did not seek. He does some of his best filmmaking with the idea, largely because he never lets the hard edges of his story dissolve into human warmth. He flirts with hope and kindness, painting them as ethereal qualities driven to the surface by force of will and driven back down by fate.

There’s something bracing about the clear, sharp glimpse we get of these qualities briefly riding on the surface of his story before they disappear.

But in “Gran Torino” Eastwood strays away from the style that worked so well for him in “Million Dollar Baby.” He softens his edges and does so with uneven results. “Gran Torino” is, in spite of its violence, a warmer, more sentimental story. Walt opens up more than Frankie Dunn ever could and it overwhelms Eastwood’s range as an actor.

Eastwood is monochromatic in his acting but unlike other actors with limited range he’s made brilliant use of it. Watching Maggie Fitzgerald chip away at Frankie Dunn’s scowling defenses rewarded us with bright sparks of humor and pathos.

The depth of Frankie’s character was intimated by small gestures and seemed all the more authentic for it. When Eastwood’s Walt lets his guard down, not a lot is revealed except perhaps that Clint Eastwood is no Russell Crowe.

Eastwood’s brilliance has never been found in how he fleshes out his stories but in how he strips them down to their bones. The man has an instinct for pathos that few directors can match.

In “Gran Torino,” Eastwood tries his hand at embracing sentimentality rather than skirting around its edges. The result is a story that will leave you feeling warmer and more upbeat. But the exhilaration of Eastwood’s uncompromising vision is missing.