Clint Eastwood has come a long way from the rough-and-tumble action and Westerns star we all first loved. Now he’s Oscar’s favorite person in the world, and is busy directing prestige projects and taking small roles in them rather than kicking ass and taking names.
…Or is he? Variety announced yesterday that Eastwood would be directing and starring in Gran Torino, a movie set for release this December but with absolutely no plot details. All we had to go on was the fact that a Gran Torino is a 1972 Ford car, kind of a classic of the era (you can see more images of it here.)
Now Ain’t It Cool News has a scoop on the plot, and it may be a dream come true for Eastwood fans. Because what do Clint Eastwood and the 1970s mean to most people? That’s right, Dirty Harry.
A tipster writes in to AICN that a movie studio was interested in purchasing his very own Gran Torino, and even though they didn’t take the car, they dropped some details on the plot. “He said it was a thriller about a killer that drives a certain Torino. His 1972 Ford Gran Torino is the only thing the police have on him. A retired police lieutenant, one Harry Callahan, makes it his mission to track down the culprit when two young police officers, one Callahan’s grandson, are shot and killed by the guy.”
So wait… much like we have seen Rambo, Rocky and John McClane as old men, are we now catching up on Dirty Harry in the golden years? Clearly the movie will not be set in the 70s, since Harry will not have instantly gone from young cop to grizzled grandfather. So why would the bad guy be driving a 35-year-old car? That detail makes me suspicious, since it seems too good to be true for a 1970s car to immediately mean another Dirty Harry movie. Also, doesn’t Eastwood seem a little beyond that? I mean, he spent last year making a World War II film entirely in Japanese, for Christ’s sake. He’s got better things to do than relive old characters, and the same can’t be said of ol’ Sly Stallone.
Then again… the plot is being kept very, very secret, which indicates they may want to save the big surprise for later. For now I remain skeptical… it seems a little too good to be true, fanboy-wise, for another Dirty Harry movie to actually exist. Plus, Eastwood is 76, for Christ’s sake. Give him a movie that goes a little easy on him!
