GRAN TORINO

America will never acknowledge, let alone apologize for, its war-crimes against Korea. The protective umbrella provided by UN approval of the 1950s invasion makes that a non-starter.

Clint Eastwood however does so, kind of - in his latest movie Gran Torino. However unlike his Iwo Jima duet - in which he exposed the blatant propaganda trick that was the famous picture of 'glory' being planted by US marines on a hill on that island (a picture which was taken a month before the island was actually captured) in Flags of Our Fathers, and then in Letters from Iwo Jima presented the human side of the Japanese trapped on that island against overpowering attack by American forces and airpower - this time he presents a fictional fable.

An expose based on history would be almost impossible given the protective 'cover' of the UN sanction for the largely American invasion which killed millions of North Koreans.

So he paints a fictional tale set in modern-day America, with a melting pot now including Koreans and Cambodian Hmongs, in which he himself plays an octogenarian Korean war veteran and widower, apparently racist and misogynist (though not in the distorted feminist sense of that word). The plot includes critiques of the dysfunctional 'nuclear' American family, trashy morals of modern-day kids, the lonely plight of senior citizens, the danger of street gangs and guns, and the futility of ecclesiastical confession. Politically-incorrect racist words like 'gook' and 'mick' are frequently used and serve to underline the present-day hypocrisy of attacking 'slurs' .....when it is actions that count....The most harmful and malicious racists use politically correct language - something like the difference between a bark and a bite.

It would be easy to dismiss this film as a mishmash 'masala' of ideas lifted from The Karate Kid and Boyz'N the Hood with a little Rain Man thrown in, but nonetheless the sum somehow exceeds the parts, as amidst all this emerges a quite wonderful paean of love and a moving fairy-tale of repentance and sacrifice.

Quite possibly the finest thing Eastwood has done.