Korean War veteran Walt Kowalski (Clint Eastwood, left) confronts a group of gang members harrassing neighbourhood teenager Thao (Bee Vang, second left) in the film Gran Torino. (Warner Bros. Pictures)

In “Killing Time,” her scathing review of the second Dirty Harry movie, Magnum Force (1973), New Yorker film critic Pauline Kael devoted copious amounts of ink to ripping Clint Eastwood a new one. After calling him “wooden” and a “tall, cold cod” (my favourite), Kael pinned the trend toward brutal violence in action films largely on the actor. “With a Clint Eastwood,” she wrote, “the action film can — indeed, must — drop the pretence that human life has any value.”

As a filmmaker, Eastwood has taken an extended look at violence. His movies feel like an apology for all of the acts he committed in star-making roles like "Dirty Harry" Callaghan.

It’s entirely possible that Eastwood read Kael’s searing article, since so much of his later work has seemed like a direct response to her criticism. As a filmmaker, Eastwood has taken an extended look at violence and its consequences, and his movies feel like an apology for all of the acts he committed in star-making roles like “Dirty Harry” Callaghan or the steely cowboy in Sergio Leone’s spaghetti western trilogy (A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly). It’s notable that in the Oscar-winning Unforgiven (1992), Eastwood’s aging gunslinger character showed no bravado whatsoever; instead, he was a craggy, scarred loner, tormented by thoughts of all the bodies strewn across his Wild West past.

So it was a shock to see the trailer for Eastwood’s latest directorial effort, Gran Torino. In one clip, the weathered movie icon brandishes a gun and snarls “Get off my lawn!” in the same menacing voice he used to deliver the line “Do you feel lucky?” all those years ago. Could it be that, at age 78, Eastwood is regressing?

When we first meet Eastwood’s character, Walt Kowalski, he’s at his wife’s funeral. As he watches his sons and grandkids in the church pews, all he can do is emit a low, bulldog’s growl, while scrunching his face into the grimace of a man who’s disgusted by everything he sees. At the reception that follows, it’s clear Walt, still sporting the military haircut he favoured in the Korean War, is a crusty old coot with anger-management issues. He grunts at the sight of his son’s foreign-made car, insults the well-meaning Catholic priest who invites him to confession and slams a door in the face of his Asian neighbour. At first, Walt’s crankiness is played for laughs – the film seems like a mildly entertaining, R-rated version of Grumpy Old Men peppered with lots of racial epithets.

But Eastwood and first-time scriptwriter Nick Schenk are far smarter than that. When the neighbour’s son, a fearful teen named Thao (Bee Vang), makes a failed attempt to steal Walt’s prized 1972 Gran Torino in a gang-initiation dare, the movie switches gears and speeds off in a fresh, surprising direction.

Walt hates the boy, just as he hates all of the Hmong (an ethnic group from southeastern Asia) who’ve gradually immigrated to his once-white Detroit neighbourhood. But when he sees a bunch of gang members harassing Thao, Walt is so irked by the “gooks” invading his turf that he grabs his shotgun and embraces the chance for some chest-puffing confrontation. The moment is electric, but also illuminating: while the man with the gun exuded cool and power in the 1970s, Walt’s hair-trigger response feels creepy, even pathetic.

Kowalski becomes better acquainted with neighbours Vu (Brook Chia Thao, left), Thao (Bee Vang, second left) and Sue (Ahney Her) in Gran Torino. (Warner Bros. Pictures)

After he successfully fends off the gang, the curmudgeon becomes an unlikely hero to his Hmong neighbours, who offer plates of home cooking and help with household chores as thanks. Though Walt is resistant at first, the family’s kindness comes at the right time, since his own sons are too busy to take his calls, and would rather see him ensconced in a retirement home.

What follows is an awakening of sorts for the old man. Walt steps gingerly into the Hmong community — first eating their food, then receiving a reading from a shaman. He eventually strikes up something resembling a friendship with both Thao and his spitfire older sister Sue (Ahney Her). Once he has begun to assume a more fatherly role with these two teens, the gruff racist is forced to admit that he has more in common with his neighbours than he does with his own long-alienated offspring.

But Walt is still a haunted man, and when Gran Torino accelerates toward its explosive outcome, he must utter a confession. Like everything else is in this subtle, thought-provoking movie, it doesn’t arrive in the form you’d expect, and it’s exhilarating to watch Eastwood tear his tough-guy persona to shreds. This humdinger of a scene — to me, the finest acting Eastwood’s ever done — is a condemnation of violence so heartfelt, it’ll leave any viewer expecting a “go ahead, make my day” payoff feeling red-faced with shame.

Gran Torino isn’t quite on par with Eastwood’s best movies — it lacks the grand, old-Hollywood polish of Unforgiven and Mystic River (2003). But it strikes me as the director’s most complete film, in terms of articulating the themes he’s been inching towards for the past 20 years, providing all of the morality and grief Pauline Kael once claimed was missing in Eastwood’s work.

Gran Torino opens in Toronto on Dec. 17, Vancouver on Dec. 25 and the rest of Canada on Jan. 9.

Lee Ferguson writes about the arts for CBCNews.ca.