‘Gran Torino’: No Sensitivity There

As it happens, Eastwood was talking about a fellow for whom sensitivity is not a problem: Walt Kowalski, the retired Detroit auto worker he portrays in his latest film, “Gran Torino.” Kowalski is the unlikely hero of a tale of redemption and sacrifice … unlikely because he is a cantankerous cuss with a mouth full of bigotry and invective, a guy who has it in for the “dagos,” the “micks,” the “hillbillies” and, most pointedly, the “slopes” … i.e., the Hmong refugees, an influx of which has left his once white, working-class neighborhood unrecognizable. In the years since he stopped acting opposite orangutans, Eastwood has become a fascinating filmmaker, willing like few others to confront the nettlesome gray areas of human existence. “Gran Torino” is a worthy addition to that canon but for all the nettlesome grays it illuminates, the most nettlesome might be one it suggests only obliquely: the notion that we are drowning in our own sensitivity/ Leonard Pitts , Miami Herald. More here .

Question: Do you think we’re “drowning in our own sensitivity”?