Am purposely leaving this a bit cryptic so as not to spoil the movie for anybody.

Went to see the Clint Eastwood's Gran Torino movie tonight, and was well caught out by it.

It builds steadily (at least in part as a result of his own actions) to a scenario where his grumpy lead character in order to help his new found and quite unlikely friends needs to neutralise a dangerous street gang.

I sat there thinking 'what should he do?', and feeling quite self righteous for seeing that if he went for the violent solutions typical of his films that the situation would get worse. Trouble was I couldn't come up with a plan. I was stumped.

Yet in the end he found an action requiring enormous personal courage that defused the situation.

I was so used to years of going to his movies as a young guy in the 70s where he blew the 'bad' guys away that I couldn't get past my expectations to see the possibility of what he did.

A nice little teaching for me that left little room for complacency (lots of you guys will probably get it up front), and a lesson too on how it's so easy to be misled by preconceptions. Nice to see too that Clint has maybe moved beyond portraying violence as the solution to violence. Some interesting but unanswered questions posed on the nature of modern life in the background too.

The lesson apart i thought it was (unlike most mainstream these days) a very decent movie - one with a bit of heart, and well worth a look...