Summary
Early in the morning, Thao comes to Walt’s kitchen and asks what the hell he is doing. Thao says, “This ends today.” Walt sits him down and says now is the time to wait. He says they can’t make any mistakes and that Thao knows Walt is the right man for the job. He tells Thao to go home, stay calm, and come back at four. Thao wants to go out and kill them. Walt repeats to go home and stay calm. Thao accepts the command.
The shot cuts to Walt mowing his lawn, then having a cigarette in the bath. He goes to his barber and asks for a straight shave, something he has never asked for. He gives the barber a twenty “in case you hit my jugular.” In the next shot, Walt goes to get fitted for a suit. Then he goes to the church to give a confession. In the box, Walt says his sins include kissing another woman at a factory party while his wife was in the other room. Another: he sold a boat and didn’t pay tax. He says he didn’t know his two sons; he didn’t know how. The priest asks if that’s it. Walt says yes. The priest absolves him of his sins. Outside the box, the priest warns Walt not to retaliate with whatever he is planning.
At the house, Thao arrives while Walt is cleaning his weapons. Walt takes Thao to the basement and gives him a medal from his war chest. Thao asks why they aren’t rolling up to “tear some ass” against the gangsters. Walt says that’s what they’re expecting. Thao asks how many men he killed. Walt says thirteen, maybe more. Thao asks what it was like. Walt says you don’t want to know. He then locks Thao in the basement. Walt says it’s goddam awful to kill a man and that there’s not a day that goes by that he doesn’t think about having killed a “little gook” just like Thao. Walt says he is soiled, that’s why he is going it alone. Thao smashes his fist on the locked gate as Walt leaves, bringing his dog to the grandmother next door. He tells her to look after Daisy, who sits sadly on the porch.
Walt phones Sue and tells her where the keys to his house are hidden. He tells her Thao is in the basement and to let herself in. The scene cuts to the priest standing out front of the gangsters’ house with police. The police say they can’t stay there all day and they have orders to leave, taking the priest with them. There is a shot of Sue releasing Thao from the basement. Then Walt is standing before the gangsters’ house. The men step out on the porch and draw their guns. Walt tells them they raped one of their own family for fuck’s sake. Walt tells him to go ahead and shoot him. Around them, Hmong people step onto their porches to watch the scene unfolding.
Walt takes his hand out of his pocket and puts a cigarette in his mouth. He asks if they have a light, then says he has a light. As he reaches in his pocket, he says, “Hail Mary, full of grace.” At that moment, the thugs all fire at him. He takes many bullets in the torso and falls on the ground with his arms outstretched, as though crucified. In his hand is his Zippo lighter.
Thao and Sue arrive in the Gran Torino. Police are on the scene. Thao asks what happened and the police push him back. Thao says he’s his friend. The cop switches from English and explains something to him in Hmong. Another cop tells Officer Chang to push those people back. Thao and Sue watch as a body bag is loaded in the stretcher and put in an ambulance. Then the Hmong gangsters are led handcuffed from their knees on the lawn to police cars. Thao wears Walt’s medal on his shirt.
Days later, Thao, Sue, and their mother attend Walt’s open-casket funeral in the same church Dorothy’s funeral was held in. The priest speaks about how Walt once told the priest he knew nothing about life or death. The priest says Walt told things how he saw them, and that he was right. The scene cuts to Walt’s family in an office listening to Walt’s will being read. The lawyer reads that the house will be left to the church, because Dorothy would have liked it to be that way.
The lawyer asks forgiveness for the language he is about to read, but says he is reading what is written. He says the Gran Torino will be left to his friend Thao on the condition that he not “chop-top the roof like one of those beaners, [...] paint any idiotic flames like some white-trash hillbilly, [or] put a spoiler on the rear end like you see on all the other zipperheads’ cars. It just looks like hell. If you can refrain from doing any of that, it’s yours.” The movie ends with Thao driving the Gran Torino along a Lake Michigan shoreline road, Daisy the dog in the passenger seat. Credits roll.
Analysis
In the film’s final scenes, Walt responds to the Hmong gang’s attack against Thao and Sue with an unexpected sense of calm. Although the priest and Thao both anticipate Walt seeking brutal and violent revenge against the gang, Walt goes about his day as if nothing has changed. However, he makes subtle changes to his routine, smoking a cigarette inside the house for the first time, asking for a straight-shave for the first time, and getting fitted for a suit for the first time. He is also uncharacteristically generous with his barber, giving a ten-dollar tip.
A curious, ominous atmosphere builds in the narrative as the audience wonders what Walt has planned. Eastwood draws out the suspense of the eerie calm even further when Walt finally goes to confession. In a defiant, repressed manner the audience has come to expect from Walt, he confesses to minor things, not speaking of the atrocities he took part in during the Korean War. Walt’s reticence frustrates the priest, who worries about what Walt has planned. He performs a superficial absolution and Walt leaves having revealed nothing particularly vulnerable about himself.
In the next scene, Walt cleans his guns, seemingly in preparation for a bloody confrontation with the gangsters. Thao comes over at the agreed-upon time and Walt gives him a medal he received in Korea. However, Thao’s desire to murder the gang members is thwarted unexpectedly when Walt locks him in the basement. Because he has developed an affection for Thao, Walt refuses to let Thao be involved in any more violence. He cites his own PTSD as reason enough for why Thao doesn’t want to know what it’s like to kill a man.
The audience finally understands what Walt has been planning when Walt appears on the gangsters’ lawn and taunts them. He draws each of them out and points his finger to frighten them into thinking he must be armed. He waits until they all have their guns pointed at him to finalize the plan. When he reaches into his pocket for his lighter, Walt makes it appear he is reaching for a weapon. The gangsters are fast on their triggers, filling his body with bullets before they realize he was merely taking out his lighter. As Walt falls to the ground, he extends his arms in the pose of Christ on the cross, the sacrifice of his body symbolically resonant.
Sue and Thao arrive at the crime scene to see Walt’s body in a body bag and the gang members being arrested. While everyone had expected Walt to try to murder the gangsters, instead he fooled them into thinking he was armed so that they would all be found guilty of his murder. With this act, Walt has done the best he could to redeem himself for endangering Thao and Sue through his violence against the gang. He has given Thao and Sue some peace and safety while the gangsters sit in prison.
The film ends with an instance of situational irony. As a lawyer reads Walt’s will to his estranged family, it is revealed that Walt amended his will to leave his Gran Torino to Thao. In his characteristically racist, abusive language, Walt specifies that Thao can have the car as long as he does nothing to modify it. The last shot shows Thao driving with Walt’s dog in the car along a serene lakeside road, an image that suggests Thao is going to consider the lessons Walt taught him as he grows up.
