Veteran actor/director Clint Eastwood is resurrecting the 'Dirty Harry' franchise with the series' first film in 20 years.
On Tuesday, studio executives at Warner Brothers revealed the 77-year-old legend will direct and star in Gran Torino. No further details were released, other than the project has a December release date pencilled in.
All the ugliness.
As entertainment this could work -- Rocky 7 or whatever it was was watchable -- but Eastwood is one of the bigger directors out there these days, one who can pretty much make whatever film he wants. He doesn't need the money, doesn't need the exposure, so why would he do this, during these times? At the very least, I hope he uses this film to make a statement about the whole anti-intellectual, "get tough with the scumbags and fuck the effete, out-of-touch liberals who are always in the way" themes so evident in the original Dirty Harry films. All the excesses of modern conservatism can be traced back to some of the attitudes in those films, and this Gran Torino would be a perfect vehicle, as it were, to discuss just how far away from reality the movement is.
