The feature film “Gran Torino”, by and with Clint Eastwood, is broadcast this Sunday evening on TF1. Did you know that rumors had presented it as the new opus of “Inspector Harry”?
In March 2008, the news had its small effect: while The Exchange, his drama carried by Angelina Jolie, was due out in November on American soil, Clint Eastwood announced that his next film would be released a month later. Of this project, we know nothing then except the title, Gran Torino, and the fact that the actor will be back in front of the camera, four years after the triumph of Million Dollar Baby which had earned him, in a personal capacity, two of the four Oscars won by the feature film.
While many are trying to figure out what this mystery movie will be about, Ain’t It Cool News made a huge revelation the next day: according to a letter received by the site, Gran Torino, broadcast this Sunday evening on TF1, would actually hide… the sixth installment of the adventures of Inspector Harry.
Twenty years after the release of The Last Target (Clint Eastwood’s concession to Warner so that the studio would let him direct the biopic Bird in exchange), the most badass policeman in American cinema of the 70s would come out of retirement there to track down the killer of her grandson, also a cop, and whose car investigators only identified, a 1972 Ford Gran Torino.
According to the letter, the content of which was disclosed by Ain’t It Cool News, the producers were looking for the vehicle in question for the film. Although improbable, the rumor did not fail to arouse the curiosity of many Internet users, at the heart of a year which already saw John Rambo and Indiana Jones come out of their respective retirements, like Rocky Balboa in 2007.
The hypothesis of seeing Clint Eastwood bid farewell to Inspector Harry Callahan, as he had done with the western in Ruthless in 1992, is gaining momentum, and it is the main interested party who puts an end to the noises corridors, in May, during the Cannes Film Festival and the press conference for L’Échange, presented in Competition. Then aged 78, the actor and director announces that he would be far too old to return to service in the police anyway.
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Released in French cinemas on February 25, 2009 and preceded by very positive echoes from the United States, Gran Torino tells the story of a Korean War veteran, racist and misanthropic, who finds himself confronted by a gang when he wants to protect the young man who had tried to steal his car.
Eastwood’s biggest French success with more than 3.4 million admissions at the end of its run (and $270 million in revenue worldwide), the feature film is indeed unrelated to the Inspector Harry saga, but difficult not to think of the character when seeing Walt Kowalski, who shares the same icy gaze, the same coldness, weapon in hand and the same phrasing with his scratchy voice. When we know the filmmaker’s propensity to play with the myths of his own filmography, it is perhaps no coincidence.
Did you notice the small hidden details of “Gran Torino”?