Gran Torino/YMMV

• Award Snub - Gran Torino received critical acclaim when the American Film Institute named it as one of the ten best films of 2008 and made it onto the top 250 films list on the Internet Movie Database. Number of Academy Award nominations? Zero.
• Complete Monster - Spider eventually attempts to kill Thao's family and rapes his sister.
• Crosses the Line Twice - Walt is so damn racist that it's stops being offensive and starts being hilarious.
  • Especially when he starts teaching Thao to talk like him and gets Thao to learn the first lesson about talking like that is to know the guy involved or risk getting a shotgun pointed at you.
    • Was that foreshadowing?
• Crowning Moment of Awesome - GET OFF MY LAWN!
  • "You ever notice how sometimes you come across somebody you just shouldn't have fucked with? Well, that's me."
  • "If I have to come back here again its gonna get fucking ugly"
• Crowning Moment of Funny - Thao tries to talk like a man and gets a gun pointed at his head for his troubles. The following scene where he puts this training to use counts too.
  • Thao then going back with advice on complaining about job, girlfriend, car etc. Thao stumbles confusedly (or sarcastically) through it all, culminating with "My ass hurts from all the guys on my construction job."
  • What about the joke Walt told early on in the film?

Walt: Oh, I've got one. A Mexican, a Jew, and a colored guy go into a bar. The bartender looks up and says, "Get the fuck out of here."

• • See Crowning Moment of Heartwarming below. "And don't put a big, gay spoiler on the rear end ..."
• Crowning Moment of Heartwarming - Walt lending Thao the Gran Torino to take Yua out on a date.
  • Walt leaves Thao his Gran Torino in his will, in gloriously profane fashion, much to the chagrin of his bitchy granddaughter.
  • A buzzed Walt pointing out to Thao that he is passing up a chance with Youa.
• Crowning Music of Awesome - Over the credits, Clint Eastwood sings about the movie's events. A song written by him no less!
• Fridge Brilliance - Walt confesses to the priest, but doesn't talk about his experiences in the war. His true confession comes later, to Thao, after he's locked the kid in the basement. . . through a screen door, evoking the screen between the confessor and the penitent in the confession booth.
  • Just before the climax,Walt says he "finishes things". A good deal of the scenes in the film show a beginning or middle, but not the end. Thao showing up to work for Walt, Walt's conversation at the bar with the priest, the barbecue, etc.
  • The first time you watch the movie, you'll probably wonder why Walt is getting a straight shave and is being fitted for a suit. After the end, it makes sense - he's getting cleaned up for his funeral, which he's already planned.
    • Because he wouldn't trust his family to take care of that properly.
• Jerk Sue - Tremendously deconstructed. Walt, who is based off Dirty Harry, has been a Jerk Sue his whole life and has thus driven away anyone who ever cared about him. The purpose of the film has him get over being such an asshole, becoming a Jerk with a Heart of Gold, and finding out that violence just begets more violence, so the peaceful idiots who would be strawmen in earlier Eastwood films were right all along. And he reaches his redemption by basically pulling one Hell of a Thanatos Gambit.
• Memetic Mutation: Get off my lawn.
• Moral Event Horizon - Spider, who performs a drive by on Thao's house and rapes Thao's sister, his own cousin.
• Tear Jerker - Walt's farewell scene to Thao, who has been locked up in Walt's basement to stop him interfering with his Heroic Sacrifice.
  • Also, when Walt, the lovable old racist, is gunned down by those gang-bangers in the end of the movie.
  • When Walt calls his son, apparently to tell him about his incurable cough of death, he does not tell him. This is compounded by Walt's confession that he regretted not becoming close to his sons.
  • Thao's sister getting raped by Spider. She comes in the house, looking doped up and scars all around her face.