With any luck Gran Torino will be the last film that Clint Eastwood will star in. And I don’t say that because the film is sub-par or because the man is past his prime. No, the film is excellent and Eastwood still has the same power on screen that he’s always had. Instead I hope it will be his last film because it seems like an incredibly fitting curtain call.

Eastwood’s screen heroes have always been gruff and surly. But underneath that hard exterior there’s always been humour and compassion. Whether it’s Blondie offering a dying man a cigar in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, or Harry Callahan visiting his injured partner in Dirty Harry, or Bill Munny avenging an outrage committed against a prostitute in Unforgiven, Eastwood’s screen heroes, despite the cynicism they might display, are still deeply concerned with truth and justice.

Gran Torino continues this theme. The story revolves around Walt Kowalski, a grizzled Korean War veteran. He’s a curmudgeon and a mealy-mouthed racist, but he still knows what’s right and wrong. He’s a man who will throw out insults like ‘chink’, ‘spook’, ‘gook’ and ‘zipperhead’ with wild abandon, but who, in the end, will stand up for truth and justice in a world that punishes the good and rewards the bad. He’s the sort of man that will tip the balance back in favour of the righteous.

One of my favourite scenes in the film is when he spots one of his neighbours, a young Asian girl called Sue, being attacked by a group of men. Walt drives up to them and gets out of his car. He doesn’t seem concerned that they’re sixty years younger than him and in much better condition. He just growls at them and says he’s not a man to fuck with. He then reaches into his jacket and pretends to reach for a gun. However, all he has are his fingers. But just when they’re about to laugh the crazy bastard off, he reaches again for his jacket and produces a real gun. Even if he is an old man, I’m sure most people would shit themselves like the kids do. With his steely eyes and his gravel-soaked voice, you know that this guy wouldn’t think twice about shooting you. Indeed, as he says in another scene, he’d shoot you and then go home and sleep like a baby.

This scene is one of the most crowd pleasing moments. It reminds you than no other actor can be so effortlessly intimidating as Clint Eastwood. The man oozes authority. But again, the scene also shows the man’s dark sense of humour. In the scene the Asian girl is walking through a rough part of town with her white boyfriend. The boyfriend tries to show some black guys how cool he is and they then proceed to make mincemeat out of him. Needless to say this doesn’t impress Walt. In some great dialogue he tells the white kid that he’s a pussy and asks him whether he’s trying to be ‘super spade’. He then says that it’s no wonder that the black guys don’t want to be his ‘bro’. In Eastwood’s world there’s nothing worse than being a gutless coward.

Gutless is something that Walt can’t be accused of. Single-handedly he stands up to a group of Asian gangsters that make his neighbours’ lives a misery. However, it takes a while for him to warm up to them.

As much as I loved Gran Torino, it is, for the most part, an incredibly predictable film. I mean, Walt may throw out racist insults like they’re going out of fashion, but we know that he’s going to eventually become a teddy bear. And we know that despite the fact that he has a low regard for his young neighbour Thao, they’re going to end up as best buds. Some of it is incredibly formulaic.

But the film is made with such care and love and skill that the predictability doesn’t matter. Every scene is a joy.

For instance, I loved the scene where Walt finally goes and meets his neighbours. It has no right to be a great scene but instead it ends up being quite sweet. Walt eats every piece of food that is offered to him and is charmed by a young girl. Oh, so all Asians aren’t the same? They’re actually individuals like him that have the same hopes, dreams and aspirations. Get out of here!

I also enjoyed the bonding between Walt and Thao. Again, it has the potential to be horrible but it ends up being wonderful. One of the best scenes is when Walt decides he wants to show Thao how grown men speak. With this in mind, Walt takes Thao to his barber. Now Walt and his barber have a unique relationship. They basically spend all their time insulting one another. However, they do it with unspoken affection. And so the give and take between them and the crusty bigotry ends up being a guilty pleasure. These days people usually bottle up all the vile things they think. Walt and his barber though just go ahead and say it. For some reason, there’s something to admire in that. Plus it doesn’t hurt that it’s Eastwood that is saying these things – you know that behind the words there’s an incorruptible decency in him.

But even though Walt eventually comes good and stops calling Thao ‘Toad’, you still get to hear all the racial insults your black heart could hope to hear. And you even get to see Eastwood have what can only be called a spit off with an elderly Asian woman – the Asian woman wins.

Another aspect of the film that really has no right to work is Walt’s strained relationship with his family. His granddaughter doesn’t give a shit about him and just wants to inherit his Gran Torino, his sons don’t understand or like him and his daughter-in-law wants to put him in a home. They’re despicable people, much like the family in Million Dollar Baby. But even though they’re one dimensional caricatures, they still offer some laughs. I couldn’t help but chuckle when they try and convince Walt to go to a retirement home and he just sits there growling, and I was delighted when the granddaughter gets snubbed in Walt’s will. She sits there all smug, thinking that she’s going to get the Gran Torino, but instead it goes to Thao. Take that and stick it up your arse.

Yet another slightly ridiculous element is Walt’s illness. Every now and again he coughs and hacks up blood. In film the mystery cough means death is just around the corner.

Having said that, I didn’t expect Walt to die the way he did. The Asian gang that is making Thao’s life a living hell end up beating and raping his sister and then they do a drive-by on his house. We think that Walt is going to go round to the gangster’s place and kill the shit out of them. I was certainly hoping that he would. But instead he goes there unarmed and gets shot to death. What the fuck? This isn’t your typical Eastwood. This isn’t like Bill Munny gunning everyone down in Unforgiven. What the hell has happened? What’s so heroic about dying? But as it turns out, Walt was thinking clearly. By getting shot in the street, unarmed, he ensures that the gang get to spend the rest of their lives in jail and that his friends Thao and Sue get the peace they deserve. He’s sacrificed himself for the greater good.

The end continues to flirt with the ridiculous – Walt ends up dead on the floor in a cross pose (he’s a martyr, don’t you see?) and at the end Clint even sings a song about a Gran Torino – but it works tremendously well. You’d have to have a hard heart not to get a little choked up.

You might as well just give up trying to see another decent Terminator film. It just isn’t going to happen now. With Rise of the Machines, Jonathan Mostow made a jokey parody of the first two films and now with Salvation McG has made Transformers. The straight-ahead, gritty, blue collar, white-knuckle thrills of the first two films have given way to tedious, humourless, colourless robot mash-ups. All the life has been drained from the series.

The film opens with a prisoner on death row called Marcus Wright talking to a bald Helena Bonham Carter. She has terminal cancer and wants him to donate his body to science after his execution. He resists a little but eventually gives in. And then if you haven’t already figured out that he’s going to become a robot when Helena gives him a form with a Cyberdyne Systems logo on it (a name familiar to fans of the franchise), it’s really rammed down your throat with a gratuitous crucifixion pose – when he’s given a lethal injection, he’s briefly raised, while strapped down, just in case he has any final words.

So this guy is going to be resurrected, right? And is he going to suffer and have to give his life so that he can save mankind? You betcha.

He even has to suffer another crucifixion pose just in case people didn’t get the subtle symbolism at the beginning. See, Marcus doesn’t know that he’s a robot and eventually hooks up with a resistance pilot. She leads him back to the resistance base and he steps on a mine. But it doesn’t kill him. You know, which on the one hand is nice, but on the other hand it’s pretty bad because humans don’t like robots much. So poor Marcus gets strung up in another crucifix pose and people shoot guns at him. But because he’s flesh with a gnarly robot skeleton, it doesn’t hurt him. It just makes his skin look bad.

Marcus is different from other characters in the Terminator series because while he has a robot skeleton, he has a human brain and a human heart. Arnie in the other films was just a robot with skin over it – the brain and everything else was mechanical. But making Marcus part human seems like terrible thinking on Skynet’s part (Skynet being the evil supercomputer made by Cyberdyne Systems that nuked the world and decided to kill every human). Why give Marcus free-will? Apparently it’s so that he can be a mole and gather information on the resistance for Skynet, but wouldn’t it be easier to have him kill John Connor? Or maybe you could have a bomb implanted in him and the second he sees John Connor, it activates. But that would make too much sense. A super-intelligent, super-ruthless supercomputer would never think of that.

So what ends up happening is that Marcus meets the resistance, gets found out to be a robot, escapes and then helps John Connor find Skynet’s head quarters – John wants to go into the lion’s den because his daddy Kyle Reese is being held prisoner there along with loads of other people. And when Marcus goes to Skynet he wanders into a room with a big screen. All of a sudden Helena Bonham Carter’s face turns up. She then tells him he’s a mole and lets him in on Skynet’s retarded masterplan to have Marcus lead John Connor to them. Fucking hell, just have Marcus turn into a giant cheese grater when he meets John Connor and have him grate Connor to the bone. It would make more sense.

Something else that would make sense is for Skynet to kill Kyle Reese when it spots him. You kill John Connor’s daddy and then John Connor can’t exist. Right? But no, even though Skynet identifies Kyle Reese, it decides to put Reese in a plastic cube cell rather than rip his head off. The poor guy has to sit there as a T-800 watches him through the glass – the shot of it watching him is filmed in such a way that it looks like the robot is peeping at him; if the robot had a cock it would be jacking off like crazy and squirting white oil all over the cell.

But anyway, how the hell does Skynet know who Kyle Reese is? How did it find out that he was John’s daddy? It doesn’t make any sense. Are the robots psychic? Did John get drunk one night and tell Skynet? Did he phone them up?

But back to Helena Bonham Carter’s face turning up on a computer screen. The filmmakers have completely missed the point about Skynet. It’s a faceless intelligence. There’s no personality to it. Once you plop Helena Bonham Carter’s face on it, you completely eliminate the dread of a faceless, unstoppable foe that you can’t speak to or reason with. And Bonham Carter’s acting is atrocious in this scene. She mugs and overacts like crazy. And to make it even more risible, her face even morphs into other characters. Even the scene in Matrix Reloaded with the Architect wasn’t this bad. Well, actually, thinking about it, maybe it was. But it’s close.

One of the most remarkable things about this scene, though, is Marcus’ reaction to the news that he’s a mole for Skynet. He reaches into his head and removes a chip and then goes and helps John Connor fight a CGI Arnie. What the fuck? How stupid is Skynet? It’s going to make it that easy for Marcus to disobey them? It would be like someone putting a sock on me and saying, ‘Now while you’re wearing this, you’re not allowed to do anything naughty.’ And then I’d just take the sock off and go mug some old grannies.

Arnie’s appearance is pretty pointless and once again demonstrates the limitations of computer graphics. As good as it looks, it doesn’t look very good. The skin looks plastic. And before you can get used to it, Arnie’s face and skin are burnt off and he’s just a metal skeleton. It’s a pointless homage to the previous films.

Speaking of pointless homages, there’s a bit where John Connor captures a robot motorcycle by using a Guns ‘n’ Roses song (‘You Could Be Mine’ from T2). It’s kind of amusing but only serves as a reminder of how much better the first two instalments are.

Other pointless homages include the use of the lines, ‘I’ll be back’ and ‘come with me if you want to live’. Again, it didn’t make me want to cheer. It just reminded me of the first two films.

I also want to know why Skynet would create massive walking robots. What’s the point of that? You have aircraft that can hover. Why do you need the Iron Giant?

Another gripe is how fucking loud the film is. The film started and then towards the end of the first scene the projectionist turned it up to eleven. I swear I thought my ears were going to start bleeding. I mean, my brother and I talk about an action sequence in Die Another Day (the hovercraft scene) that had the cinema vibrating and shaking it was so loud. Well, Terminator Salvation is like that throughout the whole of the movie. Maybe McG thinks he can bludgeon us into submission with sound effects and make us overlook the fact that his film is a colossal piece of shite. Unfortunately for him his ploy doesn’t work.

People often complain that Terminator 2 was too kid-friendly – there were too many lame attempts at humour. Well, I've never had a problem with T2, preferring it to the original, but with Rise of the Machines the franchise goes too far. The most gut-wrenchingly awful bit has to be the infamous "talk to da hand" scene. What the hell? The Terminator should have smashed the fucker’s head into the counter, not sassed him.

And the scene that inspires this response is just as bad – the scene where a naked Arnie walks into a club and gets 'dissed' by an exceedingly camp stripper. "Woah, bitch, wait your turn," the imbecile says. And then when Arnie asks for his clothes we get the "talk to the hand" line. I don't care how deeply Edward Furlong annoyed you, or how hard you laughed when Arnie tried to express machine emotions, it's nowhere near as bad as the series becoming like something you'd see on Ricki Lake.

Plus the stripping scene hits the nail far too hard on the head. Yes, we know that as much as he loves groping young ladies, Arnie is overwhelmingly gay, but the homosexuality present in his films should be less overt – where's the fun if it's handed to you on a plate? Commando certainly wouldn't have warranted repeated viewings or extended analysis if there'd been a scene where Bennett had caressed Matrix's toned ass. And then to further confound matters, there's a moment when, dressed like a leather daddy, Arnie puts on some Elton John sunglasses as 'Macho Man' plays in the background. The Terminator has become a laughing stock.

But this moment isn't a one off. At quite a few different points in time, Arnie seems to be sending himself and the film up. There's one bit where he's driving John Connor (Nick Stahl) and Kate Brewster (Claire Danes) to safety and he tells Danes to "shut up". But the line delivery is tongue in cheek. Who knew that machines could be knowingly mischievous? Another awful moment is when Arnie insists that he's not a robot but a cybernetic organism. Yay, the Terminator is politically correct now as well. (Next we'll probably get a black Terminator who insists he's a 'cybernetic organism of colour'.)

And yet another indignity Arnie has to face is when his system gets corrupted by the TX. He has to enter the William Shatner school of acting – writhing in pain as he fights against himself. It's a lousy scene.

Not fairing any better is the TX – or the Terminatrix [vomit]. She doesn't have the menace of the T-1000, plus she has a goofy machine arm that can spew flames and laser bolts. [vomit again] And while Robert Patrick looked cold as ice and ridiculously intense, Kristanna Loken looks like a bland, mildly bored fashionista – Patrick subverted the image of a cop, while Loken gets to wear flairs and high heels.

Another detail that illustrates how lacklustre Loken's performance is is the way she tilts her head when she controls other machines with her gnarly powers. This cliché has been worn to death. It's something you'd expect to see on a bad TV show, not a massive blockbuster. And although Loken gets to kill children and shoot people in the face, all her slayings (with one notable exception) are rather dull. They lack flair. (The exception is the scene where the TX rams her fist through a man’s chest and drives the car from the back seat – nice!)

But this aside, the action is disappointing. Even the much lauded crane chase fails to get the blood pumping – it certainly pales in comparison to the storm drain chase in T2. And the TX/T-800 fight is a poor imitation of the fight at the end of Judgment Day and the shootout in the graveyard is a second rate version of the T2 scene at the Cyberdyne offices. It just doesn't have the same intensity. And while part of this is due to the fact that the film's too light-hearted, it's also because the film desperately misses Brad Fiedel's score – the music is completely anonymous.

Another problem is that there's far too much obvious CGI. Just take the fight between Arnie and the TX in the toilets. There are far too many moments when you can clearly see that it's badly rendered computer models that are getting thrown about. It takes you out of the film. And speaking of CGI, why is it that the effects in T2 look so much better than the ones here? The damage that the TX takes isn't as convincing as the hits that the T-1000 takes, the brief glimpse that we get of the endoskeletons are crap and Skynet's vehicles and weaponry are awful. Maybe it's because T2, as pioneering as it was in its use of CGI, used a lot of physical effects too. Here you just feel that the filmmakers have got lazy. (By the way, what's with those crappy pot-bellied tank things? Whoever designed them should hang their head in shame.)

About the only thing that works in the film is the ending. It's much better than it has any right to be. But it doesn't erase the crap that comes before it. Rise of the Machines is a dreadful film.

My brother and I used to refer to Days of Thunder as Days of Chunder (to ‘chunder’ being to vomit). In our estimation, the film was so shit that just to watch a few moments of it would make you regurgitate all over yourself.

So how did it fare this time? Was it as bad as I remembered? Yes. And did I puke all over myself? Thankfully no.

One of the most shocking things about this film is that it was written by Robert Towne – the guy who wrote the masterpiece Chinatown. But then you look at the screen and see that Tom Cruise had a story writing credit. You can just imagine him in script meetings. ‘Yeah, I want a scene where I drive really fast with a shit-eating grin. I want one where I almost die and subsequently learn important life lessons. And I want one where I knob some ginger chick who’s at least two feet taller than me.’

But you’ve also got to remember that this is the same production team that made Top Gun. That means that you shouldn’t expect cinematic excellence. And also bear in mind that uber producer Don Simpson was the sort of man who liked to have prostitutes drink from his toilet as he pissed into it, that he once had fat injected into his penis to give it more girth (unfortunately he ended up with a deformed cock) and that during the filming of Days of Thunder he was experimenting with testosterone implants...in his ass. The theory was that the implants would give him a steady flow of macho energy. Instead they leaked and he went crazy. Mental giants were not in control of this production.

To illustrate this fact, consider the scene where Cole Trickle (yes, that’s the name of Cruise’s character) and rival race driver Rowdy Burns (another great name, and one that perhaps suggests that the character perpetually has the clap) race each other in wheelchairs. You see, earlier in the film, they had quite the rivalry going on and it lead to a spectacular crash. And now that they’re both in hospital, they decide to have a chair race. Yes, they’re primary school children.

However, there’s a scene that’s even more spectacularly stupid than this. For some reason the head of NASCAR invites them to dinner and gives them a set of keys for a car that they can drive over. He does this even though they have serious head injuries and hate each other’s guts. Yes, giving them a car and not having them driven over by a limo would be a great idea. So Rowdy encourages Cole to hire a car so that they can have another race – Rowdy in the car that the NASCAR guy gave him and Cole in the rental. And the two men proceed to race across streets and beaches in their shitty automobiles, ruining their cars. And when they finally arrive for dinner, they no longer hate each other. They share a knowing look that suggests that this vehicular destruction was a substitute for a hard cock up the arse.

By the way, the term for ramming another car is ‘rubbing’. Therefore nearly half of the film consists of men ramming and rubbing each other.

Bearing this in mind, it’s not surprising that women hardly get a look in. Nicole Kidman is a bland prophet of doom who eventually sees the light and realises that happiness lies not with professional integrity but with being a subservient beard. And then earlier in the film we have a scene where Cole and his race team get pulled over by cops. Cole is pushed into the team’s truck and is then groped by a state trooper. It turns out that the trooper is a stripper with a gorgeous set of tits. But you see, just like Maverick was wooed by his woman dressing like a man in Top Gun, Cole Trickle likes some gender reversal too.

Something else that illustrates how disposable women are in this world is the ending. You see, Trickle wins Daytona and celebrates with his beard for about two seconds. But then he sees that Harry, his surrogate father (played by Robert Duvall), isn’t joining in. This makes Cole sad and the two share a little moment. Eventually Harry perks up and the film ends with the two men running after each other with shit-eating grins. Pussy is nice and all, but real ecstasy lies in rubbing another man in victory lane.

Second to the explicit man love, the most amazing thing about Days of Thunder is how stupid Cole Trickle is. He doesn’t know anything about tires or engines. He doesn’t know that you’ll knacker a car if you give it too many revs. How am I supposed to believe that? How am I supposed to believe that a racing driver that supposedly has a few years of experience wouldn’t know that you couldn’t just take a race car and drive it as fast as you can – that you have to have a little strategy? It’s surely too much to ask of an audience.

And then when Cole is injured he’s like a small child. He has to have an MRI and gets a little frightened because no one is talking to him. He then goes on to mention that when he drives he has a man who talks to him all the time. Poor didums needs someone to hold his hand at all times. He probably even needs Harry to tell him how to pee.

But one of the most stupid acts is actually committed by Nicole Kidman. And no it’s not the moment when she decides that Cole can park his car in her garage. No, it’s the fact that she goes on a motorcycle ride with him…without a helmet...after he’s crashed his car and has head injuries. Fuck me running, would you entrust your life to this muppet? A man who can’t control a car and who makes a living by wearing overalls that have Mello Yello emblazoned all over them? He’ll probably crash the bike and then have you piss on his face.

The only thing that saves the film is how outstandingly bad it is. Nowhere else do you find the line ‘we ended up looking like a monkey fucking a football out there’ in it. It’s entertaining for all the wrong reasons. I mean, it has Carey Elwes playing a smarmy scumbag racer. That’s got to be worth something. Not a whole lot, but something. Plus there’s a scene where, after winning a race, and while celebrating his victory lap, Trickle rams Elwes at full speed. Somehow Cole doesn’t receive a life ban for this. Perhaps NASCAR know what a prick Carey Elwes is.

It’s kind of strange that Slumdog Millionaire was marketed as a feelgood movie. Yes, it has a fairytale ending, but it’s a story filled with violence and misery. There’s a lot of shit to crawl through.

At one point the film takes this literally. There’s a scene where the hero, Jamal, has to wade through loads of excrement in order to meet a film idol of his. With poo dripping off him, he’s the one person who manages to get an autograph. I’m guessing the movie star admired his determination.

And it’s Jamal’s determination to hold onto his dream that allows him to overcome all the obstacles that face him. He won’t let anyone get in his way.

Of course, as in most ‘feelgood’ movies, the dream is a beautiful girl. Jamal is obsessed with Latika, and throughout the movie we see his mind flash to a recurring image of her standing at a train station and smiling up at him. He plays it over and over in his head. Getting the girl is all that matters to him.

Even fame and wealth don’t matter. But in a curious twist of fate, Jamal ends up on the Indian version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? – it’s his final attempt to win over the woman he loves.

And the game show is an excellent framing device for the movie. At first I was concerned that it might be too gimmicky or just plain dull. How interesting can a game show be? But instead it works superbly, serving as an imaginative way of telling the character’s life. All the questions and all the answers somehow reveal something more about the man.

Another concern I had about the framing device was the fact that the film begins with Jamal’s torture for doing so well on the game show. Therefore, knowing that he’d got the questions right, the game show scenes would have little tension. But thankfully the filmmakers have a couple of tricks up their sleeve.

The first trick concerns the game show host. At one point, when Jamal is in the bathroom, he gives Jamal the answer for a particularly tough question. Is the game show host helping him or trying to screw him? We already know that Jamal gets the question right, but we don’t know whether he goes with the TV personality or against him. As it turns out, the game show host is pissed off with the fact that Jamal may become a bigger star than him and tries to fuck him over. Thankfully Jamal trusts his instincts and ignores the host.

Before I go on, I must point out how annoying the game show host. He’s a right smug bastard. But he’s annoying in a good way. He helps us identify with Jamal even more – we want him to beat his smarmy sparring partner and go home a rich man. And all the casual insults and mentions of him being a ‘chai wallah’ tell you a lot about this society. Yes, the economy may be exploding and skyscrapers might be replacing slums, but equality is still a long way off. It’s still the haves against the have-nots.

But back to the game show…

The second trick is the way that Jamal gets through his torture unscathed and then has to return to the television studio to finish the game. Finally, at the very end, we have a question where the outcome is unknown. And the tension in this scene is palpable. I haven’t been on the edge of my seat like that in a long time.

Not that the monetary outcome is of any importance. The important thing is that Jamal manages to get the girl. But of course, a few million Rupees won’t hurt.

The one disappointing thing about the film is the chemistry between the adult Jamal and Latika, or lack thereof. Sparks don’t fly. Some of the little moments between them just feel a little flat. Thankfully, though, you have Danny Boyle on hand to inject the film with loads of visual pyrotechnics to make you forget the fact that the love story is actually a little bland. The train station scene, for instance, is so fantastic because of the energy that is injected into it by the director.

In fact, the directing is so energetic that sometimes it’s on the verge of schizophrenia. Nearly every shot is a crazy Dutch angle. But for some reason, it works really well. The characters never get a chance to see the world straight on – their viewpoint is always skewed, their reality a little distorted.

For me the best scenes are the ones that focus on the characters as children. In particular, I love the sequence where the two brothers are on the train. They tie themselves to the roof and spend their time stealing and grifting. Even though they’re thieving, the sequence is filmed with such an exuberance and innocence that you can’t help but think of them as loveable little tykes. This is really the only way they can survive.

But mere survival isn’t what these characters long for. Each wants a part of the new Indian dream. Jamal’s brother is a casualty of this, falling into the trappings of easy money and criminality, but Jamal somehow manages to overcome his slumdog origins and fulfils his destiny. It’s a fairytale ending but getting there is hell.

Directed by Danny Boyle
Written by Simon Beaufoy
Produced by Christian Colson
Original Music by A.R. Rahman
Cinematography by Anthony Dod Mantle
Starring Dev Patel, Freida Pinto and Anil Kapoor

Running Time: 120 mins

Rated R for some violence, disturbing images and language, you chai wallah!