Clint Eastwood shines up his 'Gran Torino'

In the afternoons, there's a hush and warm amber glow in Clint Eastwood's office, which, unlike other bungalows at the Warner Bros. studio lot, has a rustic feel and furniture that manages to be just as practical as it is stylish. All of that suits the 78-year-old Hollywood icon who started off his career as John Wayne but seems to be finishing it as John Ford.

The newest addition to the office decor is a grim poster for "Gran Torino," Eastwood's 66th feature as an actor and his 29th as a director; in the black-and-white photo, the movie star's face is clenched up in his famous scowl, a weapon that's been brought to bear on cinema street punks and sidewinders for decades.

Eastwood will be the first to say that, for "Gran Torino," there's a bit of false advertising at work in that theatrical scowl and its message to longtime fans who might think the new movie is about "Dirty Harry" Callahan working a grand theft auto case.

"I think the movie will surprise some people, the nuance of it," Eastwood said as he sat back on a couch in his office. "If it was just a kick-ass movie, well, I wouldn't want to do that. I've done those kinds of movies. These days, I would only do the movie if it had something to say. I didn't want it to be Dirty Harry at 78."

Instead, Eastwood brings us prickly Walt Kowalski, a Korean War veteran and recent widower who treats his lonely house and its yard as occupied territory in a neighborhood that has changed through the decades. The biggest change is the influx of Hmong neighbors, whose Asian culture, language and faces remind Kowalski of his own dark deeds that he had hoped were left behind in a distant land. Those memories and a brewing conflict in the neighborhood with young gang members set up the smoldering conflict in the film and, well, if you recognize the scowl on the poster, you know there's a showdown coming.

The title of the film refers to Kowalski's one prized possession: a gleaming, muscular 1972 Gran Torino that resides in his garage, along with a lifetime of tools, which he treats reverently, like souvenirs from an age when men could fix things and people said what they thought and worked hard. There's a streak of Archie Bunker in Kowalski, who has a deep and dazzling command of racial epithets.

Eastwood chuckled at the idea that the film is a primer on the white American lexicon of bigotry.