Gran Torino has its double in Seven Pounds. Both films are about a death that takes the form of an ultimate sacrifice to others. The others in each film are needy—meaning, they need something that the main character has lots of. In the case of Seven Pounds, the main character is a liberal black male, and what he has to offer is his beautiful black body; in Gran Torino, the main character is a conservative white male, and what he has to offer is arrogance and aggression.

The recipient of this arrogance/aggression is a meek Hmong teen named Thao (Bee Vang). The boy lives next to Walt Kowalski (Clint Eastwood) in a Detroit neighborhood that has seen much better days. Gangs of all kinds now control this economic wasteland; the police and the church are powerless. The situation is down to the lawless terms of the Wild West, to a war of all against all, to a raw survival of the meanest. And none is meaner than Kowalski. He is a racist in a part of the city that has too many races. He also has no love for white people or what they have become—consumers of professional sports, black entertainment, indecent clothes, and foreign cars. The new whites are all about cell phones and text messaging; the old whites are all about steel tools and face-to-face communication.

Somehow the old and bitter racist develops an interest in the boy and his big family. Somehow he learns that Hmong have values that are as solid as his values. Somehow he makes the ultimate sacrifice and transfers his rage and iron values to the next generation. The film is not bad, but I have no idea why Manohla Dargis (the critic at The New York Times) thinks it's the greatest thing to happen since Jesus was hanged on the cross. Gran Torino's plot is predictable, its political motives are dubious (if not outright offensive), and Eastwood again plays Eastwood.