At 78, Clint Eastwood may have reached the age of cantankerous old men on front porches everywhere – but when Clint tells you to stay off his lawn, he tells you with an M1 Garand rifle pointed at your head.

In Gran Torino, Eastwood directs himself as the growling, scowling, tobacco juice-spitting Walt Kowalski, a Korean War veteran and retired auto worker. When we meet him, he is at his wife’s funeral, casting his disapproving squint over his grandchildren and their attire. “Dad’s still living in the ’50s,” Walt’s son says. “There’s nothing anybody can do that won’t disappoint the old man.”

Walt, set in his ways and his prejudices, is as much a symbol of a bygone America as the ’72 Gran Torino he shines in the driveway. A limp American flag stands sentry over Walt’s well-maintained square patch of lawn, in a neighbourhood now dominated by Asians, African-Americans and Latinos. He guards his territory with an arsenal of colourful racist epithets.

When a street gang disrupts the peace of the neighbourhood, Walt comes to the rescue of his immigrant neighbours (more to protect his own turf than anything) and unwittingly becomes a local hero. He is befriended by Sue, the intelligent and Americanised daughter of the intergenerational Hmong family next door, and takes on the good-for-nothing son, Thao, as something of an apprentice. He also earns the wrath of the Hmong gangbangers, which sets him on the path to a dramatic climax and offers him one last opportunity of redemption.

Hollywood is brimming with tired stories of ‘unlikely friendships’, but it’s testament to how well its characters are drawn that Gran Torino never seems contrived or hokey. Eastwood puts in a typically fierce performance, but spare a thought for first-time Hmong actors Bee Vang and Ahney Her who manage to hold their own against him.

It’s also surprisingly funny. The wowsers will be put off by some of Walt’s casual racism, but it is actually played for laughs, especially in the scenes where he trades barbs with his, um, barber. There are also a lot of laughs in Walt’s bonding sessions with Thao, where Thao learns that being a man means fixing faucets and complaining about auto-mechanics.

Don’t let the woefully inadequate trailer fool you. Gran Torino turns out to be an edgy, humorous and touching urban parable, even if the climax verges on the melodramatic. It’s also notable for being potentially Eastwood’s last performance in front of the camera (he is apparently going to concentrate on directing – his film Changeling opens here in just a couple of weeks). If this is the case, it’s a hell of a finish. In Walt Kowalski, Clint Eastwood has given us a hero in the grand tradition of Clint Eastwood heroes – a worthy descendant of Harry Callahan and The Man With No Name.

- Review by Darryn King

Gran Torino opens in Australian cinemas on Thursday, January 22.
You can view the Gran Torino trailer here on TheVine.