Film / Gran Torino

"Get off my lawn..."

"This year, you have to make a choice between two life paths. Second chances comes your way. Extraordinary events culminate in what might seem to be an anticlimax. Your lucky numbers are 84, 23, 11, 78, and 99. What a load of shit."

— Walt Kowalski, reading a newspaper

Gran Torino is a 2008 film, directed by and starring Clint Eastwood, in what was once rumoured to be his final onscreen performance^note It wasn't; he later had lead roles in Trouble with the Curve, The Mule, and Cry Macho as well as a cameo in American Sniper since.

He plays Walter "Walt" Kowalski, an elderly retired veteran of The Korean War living in Highland Park, Michigan (a rundown suburb of Detroit), shortly after the death of his wife. He has difficulty relating to his two grown-up sons, who are caught up in their own lives, and generally disapproves of the way the world is changing, such as the influx of the Hmong People, immigrants who fled Laos after The Vietnam War.

Next door is Thao Vang Lor, a quiet boy who is pressured into joining his cousin Spider's gang. As part of his "initiation", Thao is pressured to steal Walt's prized possession, a 1972 Ford Gran Torino, but fails, and is caught. For dishonoring his family, Thao's mother asks Walt to accept Thao's help in doing chores around his house, which leads to an Odd Friendship. Spider, upset at Thao's rejection of his gang, begins to retaliate against the family, forcing Walt to intervene.

Not to be confused with the series Gran Turismo. Or the My Hero Academia character.

---

This film provides examples of:

• Actor Allusion: Walt's pictures of the Korean War are stills from Kelly's Heroes.
• Affectionate Gesture to the Head: Walt pats the head of a child in a Hmong household as a gesture of kindness; the family of the child is shocked by this due to their cultural differences.
• Anti-Climax: Walt's confrontation with the gang members at their house is framed like a massive gunfight is going to happen, like the one from the finale of Unforgiven. Then Walt reaches into his jacket... and is promptly riddled with bullets, and falls over dead. Exactly as Walt planned: an entire neighborhood that had been scared into silence by the gang or were unwilling to snitch because of cultural ties was now motivated to talk to the police, and no judge would side with a gang of known hooligans over a white, decorated and more importantly unarmed war veteran who they murdered in cold blood in the street.
• Artistic License – Cars:
  • Walt claims to have installed the steering wheel in his Gran Torino. All Gran Torinos were assembled in Lorain, Ohio, not the Metro Detroit area Ford Plant.
  • Walt's Torino's license plate has three letters, followed by three numbers followed by one letter on a white background with a blue top band. Michigan license plates have three letters followed by four numbers. However, since he's owned it and the truck since new (and Walt being a Grumpy Old Man is unlikely to turn in still valid plates for new ones), they should both have the early 70s pattern license plate with three letters followed by three numbers on a red background.
• Asians Eat Pets: The grumpy old man protagonist pesters his Hmong neighbors with dog-eating remarks. In turn Sue, the young neighbor, snarks they only do cats. He seems to be confused about whether or not to believe in the stereotype, but is willing to give them some trust over the matter. In the end, when his last will is read, it turns out he wished to leave his dog in their care on the condition they won't eat him.
• Awesome McCoolname: It’s implied that Spider gave himself the nickname because he thought it sounded cooler than his actual name, Fong. Sue apparently disagrees with this notion as she mocks him for what she sees as an Atrocious Alias.
• Badass Boast: Walt has a few:
  • "Ever notice how you come across somebody once in a while that you shouldn't have fucked with? That's me."
  • "Yeah, I blow a hole in your face and then I go in the house and I sleep like a baby. You can count on that. We used to stack fucks like you five feet high in Korea ... used you for sandbags."
• Bait the Dog: When Thao is being harassed by a gang of Mexican thugs, Spider and his gang come over to scare them off. At first, it seems like they're protecting Thao. However, as the film progresses, it becomes more or less clear that their first act of kindness was not at all genuine.
• Batman Gambit: Walt's plan to deal with Spider's gang is to spook them into using their itchy trigger fingers, gunning him down. He turns up unarmed, and creates a ruckus so people will watch his murder. As a result, Spider's gang is arrested for murdering an unarmed old white war hero. He's lucky that the whole gang opens fire on him and not just one or two of them.
• Berserk Button: It's hard not to press Walt's: it is best not to steal his Gran Torino, get him to move into a retirement home, or, in a more heartwarming example, hurt Thao and Sue.
• Big Brother Instinct: Played straight with Sue when she bulldogs one of Spider's boys trying to kidnap Thao.
• Bilingual Bonus: Most of the Hmong dialogue is untranslated, and that which does get translated is by interpreters in the scene rather than for the audience's benefit.
• Bittersweet Ending: Walt is dead, but he was terminally ill anyway and his sacrifice lets justice be done. Thao gets the Torino, and has a bright future ahead of him, but Sue is traumatised after being gang-raped, and doesn't seem to be on the way to making any sort of recovery.
• Bleak Abyss Retirement Home: If Walt had let his son force him into a nursing home, odds are it would have been one of these. Walt certainly expects this trope to be in effect.
• Blood from the Mouth: Walt periodically coughs up blood throughout the movie, foreshadowing his eventual death — though, interestingly, it's not whatever's causing that cough that does him in.
• Book Ends: A funeral.
• Boomerang Bigot: Walt is a white Pole who throws derogatory slurs at everyone, including Poles and whites.
• Bratty Teenage Daughter: Ashley Kowalski, granddaughter in this case. She smokes in Walt's garage and starts tactlessly asking for his possessions after he dies.
• Brick Joke: The gifts Walt receives from the Hmong neighbors after saving Thao. He at first doesn't want them, but then relents as persuading them doesn't work. So he tells them where to place them. Later on, when he's had enough and tried to persuade them again, one of them brings him a chicken dumpling meal, which he earlier enjoyed at the BBQ, which he accepts.
• Collateral Angst: Sue spends most of the film as an engaging, intelligent, and interesting character. However, after she is beaten and gang-raped in order to motivate Walt's Heroic Sacrifice, that's it for her agency, and even dialogue, for the rest of the film. We only see her again, still bruised and shell-shocked, in the congregation at Walt's funeral.
• Coming of Age Story: A delayed example — Walter Kowalski, even when he is a senior who has raised a family, still lives emotionally as the young soldier that crossed the Moral Event Horizon during the Korean War. He must assume he is a grumpy, jaded, cranky, Racist Grandpa who has alienated his own family and now that his wife has died is completely alone, so he can be a real Papa Wolf.
• Convenient Terminal Illness: It's implied Walt has lung cancer, as he coughs up blood several times during the movie.
• Cool Car: Everyone wants Walt's 1972 Gran Torino.
• Cranky Neighbor: Walt, initially. The elderly Hmong lady next door is only too happy to return his sentiments.
• Crucified Hero Shot: Walt, after he gets shot to death by the Hmong gang at the end of the movie.
• Death Glare:
  • Walt levels quite a few over the course of the film. The film starts out with him glaring at virtually the whole cast.
  • Walt's son turns around and gives one to Thao when Walt leaves his car to the young man instead of his grand daughter.
• Deconstruction: What Unforgiven did for the Westerns that Clint Eastwood starred in, this film does for Clint Eastwood's other major genre, the urban vigilante film.
• Deconstructed Character Archetype: As mentioned in the above, this film deconstructs the usual Clint Eastwood character in his crime films like Unforgiven did for his western character. Walt in this movie has the usual grouchy standoffish behavior that Eastwood characters usally have. This also means his own family can't deal with him because of how difficult he is and likewise he has very few friends. When (like in the usual Eastwood movie) he tries to intervene in-between the conflict with Thao's family and the gang, he only makes the situation worse. Walt in the end also defeats the gang members in the end not by shooting them like what you expect in a Eastwood movie, but instead out smarting them into killing him in front of a whole bunch of witnesses that will in turn get them sent to prison for the rest of their life.
• "Do It Yourself" Theme Tune: Clint Eastwood co-wrote the song on the end credits.
• Dramatic Drop: Walt drops his glass when Sue returns from being gang-raped.
• Duct Tape for Everything: Or to be exact, duct tape, vise-grips and WD40 for half of everything.
• Dysfunctional Family: Both Walt's and Thao's families. Walt's sons and their families hate him and just want his inheritance for their own selfish gains, while Thao is the cousin of Spider, who is a leader of the gang and the Big Bad.
• Embarrassing Nickname: Walt dislikes being called "Wally" by Sue. He eventually gets used to it.
• First-Name Basis: When Walt allows the priest to use his name, it is a dramatic moment.
• Foreshadowing: The newspaper article (see the quote at the top of the page) foreshadows events at the end of the film.
• Gangbangers: The Hmong boys are somewhere on the scale between this and a Generic Ethnic Crime Gang.
• Gangland Drive-By: The gang shoots at Walt's windows in a drive-by.
• Genre Deconstruction: In defiance of the common Vigilante Man trope Eastwood himself helped popularize, Walt's attempt to drive off the gang alone goes horribly wrong and just results in them being emboldened by their humiliation and brutally retaliating, beating and raping Sue and eventually killing Walt himself. What solves the issue is when Walt gets the police involved and plenty of witnesses to the gang's crimes.
• Good Shepherd: The rookie priest Father Janovich tries his best to be this, and Walt's wife clearly liked him; Walt's not nearly as impressed, but then, he's a curmudgeon. In the end, Janovich admits to having learned a bit from Walt.
• Gory Discretion Shot: Averted when Spider burns Thao's cheek with a cigarette.
  • Played straight when Walt witnesses a ceremony where his Hmong neighbors cut the head off of a chicken. The cut itself is never shown but it's heard when it shown Walt's reaction to it.
  Walt: Goddamn barbarians.
• Grumpy Old Man: Walt Kowalski, complete with the classic "Get off my lawn!" line.
• Hard-Work Montage: Thao trying to make amends for trying to steal from Walt.
• Hate Sink: Before we are introduced to Spider and his gang, we have Walt's sons and their selfish families at the beginning of the movie planning to swindle Walt out of his possessions and their Irrational Hatred of their father.
• Heel–Faith Turn:
  • Possibly with Walt, even though he isn't technically a bad guy, given that his last words are ""Hail Mary, full of grace." It's a little ambiguous, though.
  • His confession suggests that since the war he's been a curmudgeon, but actually a stand up truly good person with the worst sins he's confessing being either kissing a woman at a Christmas party 40 years prior, not paying the tax after selling an expensive possession, or not being close to his two sons. However, his second confession, to Thao in the basement, is what you'd expect from a veteran. It even is done through a grill similar to his first one.
  • On the other hand, it's not clear that he had a well-formed conscience, at least from a Catholic perspective. e.g. You would think that his (relatively recent) history of using frequent racial slurs against minority groups would merit at least some mention in the confessional, and he also should have confessed that he hadn't been to Confession for X number of years, since Catholics who have attained the age of reason are required (under penalty of grave sin) to go to Confession at least once per year.
• The Hero Dies: Walt himself at the end.
• Heroic BSoD: The final straw for Walt is when Sue is gang raped. He drops his shot glass in reaction.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Walt provokes the gang into killing him in public so the members will be put away for his murder.
• Higher Education Is for Women:
  Sue: It's really common. Hmong girls over here fit in better, we adjust. The girls go to college, the boys go to jail.
• Humiliation Conga: Trey, in his one scene. He and Sue are accosted by three black youths who treat him with only contempt, tell him to go away, and start coming on strongly to an uninterested Sue. After he completely fails to defend Sue, Walt shows up and rescues her at gunpoint. When Trey tries to make nice with Walt, Walt treats him with even more contempt. We never see him again.
  Trey: Way to go, old man!
  Walt: [turns his gun on him] Shut up, pussy. What is all this "bro" shit, anyway? Want to be Super Spade or something? These guys don't want to be your bro, and I don't blame 'em. Now get your ofay Paddy ass on down the road.
• Hypocrite/Small Name, Big Ego: As a lot of Racist Grandpas, Walt regards himself as a man who knows plenty about life and death, and who is abused by those (other races) surrounding him. Everyone else thinks is just a Grumpy Old Man. The movie shows his Character Development from this to a realistic assessment of his qualities and weakness.
• I Have No Son!: If Walt cutting off his sons and their families out of his will after his Heroic Sacrifice is any indication, likely for their Irrational Hatred of Walt and despicable You're Not My Father nature towards him in life.
• Incurable Cough of Death: Complete with coughing up blood for Walt. Justified, considering his age and heavy smoking; it's strongly implied to be lung cancer.
• I Need a Freaking Drink: Walt offers Father Janovich a beer the day after Sue gets raped. Janovich exhaustedly says, "I'd love one."
• Insult of Endearment: Walt's incessant use of racial slurs more or less matches this. He and his old friends at the barber shop call each other all kinds of names.
• Intergenerational Friendship: Walt is (based on the fact that he's a Korean War vet) in his late seventies or early eighties. He befriends siblings Thao and Sue, who are teenagers. Youa (also a teenager), the siblings' mother (in her thirties or forties), and Father Janovich, who is 27. Before them, he is Vitriolic Best Buds with Martin the barber, who's in his forties.
• Invulnerable Knuckles: Averted. When Walt gives Smokie a beatdown to intimidate him and his fellow gang members into leaving Thao alone, Sue notices his bruised knuckles the next day. He further messes them up against his kitchen cabinets after Sue's rape.
• Jaded Washout: Played With. Walt gets no respect from his family or - at first - the neighbors (and he's not really giving any excuse to doubt him), but he does eventually get respect from the neighbors, and has no trouble with money.
• Jerkass Has a Point: After Sue was raped, Thao vowed revenge on Spider with the intention of killing him. Walt then had a very good reason to lock Thao in the basement, knowing the horrors of killing a person and that Thao giving into revenge could be a slippery slope that would make him end up just like Spider.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Walt tries to hide his nice side with a racist exterior, but Sue is indeed correct in saying that he's a good man.
• Kick the Dog: See how Walt's family treat his wife's death and his granddaughter's greed and cruelty.
• Knight in Sour Armor: Walt again. He's a sour, cynical bastard, but Sue correctly has him pegged as a good man.
• Know-Nothing Know-It-All/Heel Realization: Invoked and played straight: Just after Walt accuses Father Janovich of being this, Father Janovitch asks him what Walt knows. Walt realizes that he knows plenty about death, but not a lot about life.
  Walt: "Death is bittersweet? Bitter in the pain, sweet in the salvation." That's what you know of life and death? Good God, it's pathetic.
  Father Janovich: What do you know, Mr. Kowalski?
  Walt: Plenty. I lived with death for three years in Korea. We shot people, we stabbed them with bayonets, we hacked seventeen-year-old kids to death with shovels, for Christ's sake. I did things that won't leave me till the day I die, horrible things, things I have to live with.
  Father Janovich: And what about life?
  Walt (has to think for a second, and struggles with his answer) Well... I survived the war... got married... and raised a family.
  Father Janovich: Sounds like you know more about death than you do living.
  Walt (downs a shot) Maybe so.
• Laser-Guided Karma: After Walt's wife dies, his sons and their families disrespectfully tried to get their hands on Walt's possessions. By the end of the film, Walt leaves them with nothing.
• Last Disrespects: During the funeral of Walt Kowalski's wife, his granddaughter was dressed inappropriately and can be seen fiddling around on her cell phone during the service. Walt's sons start asking Walt if he wants to go to a "nice retirement place" so they could sell the house, and the same disrespectful granddaughter starts asking whether she could have some of the furniture and other possessions in the house.
• Loophole Abuse: Thao's family forces him to do work for Walt to make up for trying to steal his Gran Torino; Walt, however, doesn't want this, and only accepts when the family insists declining would be a grave insult. However, nobody specifies what sort of jobs he should do, so Walt's first job for him is something simple and meaningless: counting the number of birds in the trees around his house.
• MacGuffin: The Gran Torino.
• Mighty Whitey: Walter. It apparently takes one elderly auto-worker to figure out how to fix everything that his Hmong neighbors can't, whether that's teaching Theo how to "be a man" or stopping the local gang. At the cost of his life, mind you, but still.
• Minor Major Character: Officer Chang, the Hmong policeman who arrests Spider at the end of the film. Thematically as well as in-universe, since in the context of the film he shows that Thao falling into the same life as his cousins was never a foregone conclusion.
• Misanthrope Supreme: Walt, at first.
• My God, What Have I Done?:
  • Done non-verbally, when Walt learns that his attempt to intimidate the Hmong gang ended up getting Sue beaten and raped. And this is on top of the drive-by at her house. Then he goes home and starts punching up his cabinets — even the glass ones — while verbally berating himself.
  • Played comically by the priest when Walt finally comes to his church for confession.
• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: In retaliation for them assaulting Thao, Walt tracks down Spider and his gang to their house and proceeds to beat and kick the shit out of Smokie when he's alone, before threatening to kill him if he touched Thao again, without raising his voice above a venom-filled whisper.
• "Not So Different" Remark: Walt basically says this to himself when he's in the bathroom at the neighbor's house. He looks in the mirror says that, "God, I've got more in common with these gooks than I have with my own spoiled-rotten family."
• Not The Illness That Killed Them: While Walt does have some type of lung disease, he ends up getting murdered by Hmong gang in a Thanatos Gambit that gets them arrested.
• N-Word Privileges: The film examines the rules around this a lot; Walt assumes N-word privileges towards everyone. Interestingly, Walt never actually uses literal N-word privileges, and when confronted by black thugs he opts for the common 1950's - 1970's racist terms "spook" and "spade" (the use of such seem to confuse the young men, or at least leaves them briefly nonplussed).
• One Last Smoke: Once he's decided to face the gangsters, Walt treats himself to a wet shave, a tailor-fitted suit and a cigarette in the bathtub.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Father Janovich goes Oh, Crap! when Walt finally decides to confess.
• Papa Wolf: Walt turns into one for Thao and Sue after becoming a grandfather figure to them.
• Passed-Over Inheritance: His family are shocked to find that in his will Walt leaves them absolutely nothing. His house is donated to the church and, much to the horror of his bratty granddaughter, whose face lit up at the mention of the car, his Gran Torino goes to Thao.
• Peer Pressure Makes You Evil: Sue notes that the women in Hmong society go to college while the men go to prison. We see Thao heavily pressured to join his cousin's gang.
• Perp Walk: Spider has one as he's being led out in cuffs.
• Phoneaholic Teenager: Ashley, Walt's granddaughter, whines about not getting any coverage...during her grandmother's funeral.
• Posthumous Character: Walt's wife. She was apparently a very religious woman and active in her local Catholic church. Walt loved her deeply.
• The Precious, Precious Car: Walt's Gran Torino. Not only is it vintage, Walt has a personal attachment to its construction: he was on the line where it was built.
• Pretend Prejudice: Walt.
• Pretty Fly for a White Guy: Trey, Sue's friend, acts and behaves like a ghetto rapper. None of this impresses the gangbangers who harass Sue, nor Walt, who finds him pathetic and annoying.
• Punch a Wall: Walt ends up doing this after Sue's rape, breaking several of his cabinet doors - even the glass ones - in his rage.
• Racist Grandma: Walt is a deconstruction of this trope. The whole point of the movie is that Walt realizes the people who he has being directing racial slurs all his life aren't so different, that his experience as a soldier only let him know much more about death than about life, and that he is a Know-Nothing Know-It-All.
• Rape as Drama: Spider's gang rapes Sue to get back at Thao and Walt. This drives Walt over the edge, and into his sacrifice.
• A Real Man Is a Killer: Invoked and ultimately defied. After his sister get raped, Thao eagerly asks Walt to tell him "what it's like to kill a man". Walt's response is a furious rebuttal, telling him that no matter what the reason, he does not want to know what it's like, much less actually do so and have to live with it.
• Real Men Love Jesus: Walt disparages his local Good Shepherd but develops a respect for him. He reveals himself to be a believer in the end, when he says a Hail Mary before his death and ultimately donates his house to the church.
• Reckless Gun Usage: Hinted at when Thao inadvertently points a rifle at Walt while examining it, evoking an unspoken rebuke.
• Redemption Equals Death: Walt sacrifices himself to save Thao and Sue after a life of guilt for the things he did in war, most specifically killing a young man about Thao's age when he was trying to surrender. Walt's last scene with Thao, spoken through a screen door, acts like a final confession before death.
• Retired Badass: Walt Kowalski embodies a realistic version of this trope, as well as being a Deconstruction of the trope. Walt's fighting skills don't help him in his life in the city. His recently deceased wife was all too aware that their two grown sons cannot empathize with Walt, so she asks the local Good Shepherd to keep an eye on him after her death. Walt’s antics and Badass Boasts give him a reputation of a Cranky Neighbor and only make things worse (see My God, What Have I Done?). His real act of bravery is realizing he is a Troubled Sympathetic Bigot, and the conflict is not solved by his acts of violence but with a Batman Gambit that invokes Shoot Him, He Has a Wallet!. The only people who really felt protected by him were his neighbors.
• Revenge by Proxy: Spider's gang rapes Sue to get back at Thao and Walt.
• Revenge Is Not Justice: In a deconstruction of vigilante justice, Walt's attempt to help the Vang Lor family by assaulting a gang member leads to a drive-by shooting, the injuring of Thao, and the kidnapping and raping Sue. While Thao desires revenge, Walt imprisons him so he can't act on his revenge since Walt knows from experience that killing others isn't as glorious as Thao thinks. Walt instead orchestrates his own death so Spider and the gang can be arrested.
• Rice Burner:
  • Walt's will gives the Gran Torino to Thao on the condition that "you don't chop-top the roof like one of those beaners, don't paint any idiotic flames on it like some white trash hillbilly, and don't put a big, gay spoiler on the rear end like you see on all the other zipperheads' cars."
  • Spider's car is a straight example.
• Rule of Three: Several examples include: Walt using a gun as a means to threaten 3 times, Thao and his attempt to steal the Gran Torino is mentioned three times including him actually trying to steal it and Walt visiting the Barber 3 times.
• Say Your Prayers: Walt whispers the first words of Hail Mary, when he's about to be killed.
• Screw Politeness, I'm a Senior!: The reason Walt gets away with universal N-Word Privileges.
• Shell-Shocked Veteran: Walt is kind of one. "The thing that haunts a man the most, are the orders he doesn't want to follow."
• Shoot Him, He Has a Wallet!: Walt uses this in his sacrifice, pointing a finger gun at all of the armed gangsters and then drawing a lighter in an aggressive-looking manner, so the gang gets arrested for murdering an unarmed man.
• Stay in the Kitchen: The Hmong people traditionally believe that gardening, cooking and cleaning are women's work. Even Spider, who's less into the heritage than his cousins, invokes this trope, mostly to make fun of Thao for how often he's seen cleaning and gardening. Walt, on the other hand and in a surprising turn, doesn't invoke sexism of any kind.
• Suicide by Cop: Walt pretends to have a gun so the gang will kill him and get locked up for murder.
• Surrogate Soliloquy: Walt talks to his dog, when he gets really stressed he talks to himself. While he is talking to his dog about the woman next door, the woman next door is talking to herself saying the exact same things about him in another language.
• Tactful Translation: Sue attempts to provide one of these for her Racist Grandma's insults to Walt as "Welcome to our home", but given how angry the grandma is, even Walt who doesn't speak a word of Hmong gets the gist of what she's telling him.
• Thanatos Gambit: Walt's plan to bring the gangsters to justice involves his death.
• That Came Out Wrong: Thoa's attempt at speaking like a guy:
  Thao: Boy, does my ass hurt from all the guys on my construction job.
  Walt: (Over Martin laughing his ass off) Well, fuck me.
• Took a Level in Kindness: Initially a grumpy old man, Walt slowly starts to bond with Sue and Thao, especially Thao. He helps set Thao on the right path, protects them from gangs and thugs, and makes the Heroic Sacrifice of baiting Spider and his gang into gunning him down with plenty of witnesses in order to lock them up and leave Thao and Sue alone for good.
• Tranquil Fury: Walt finally calms down in the moments before his death. "Oh, I am at peace."
• Troll: Walt's executor intentionally drags out his reading of Walt's will so he can get the maximum possible effect when Walt's family realizes that he left them nothing.
• Troubled Sympathetic Bigot: Due to a combination of factors, Walt is a Grade A Grumpy Old Man, and holds certain views about his Hmong neighbors that are continually challenged during the course of the movie. In the end he befriends Thao and gives him the prized Gran Torino.
• Tsundere: Walt becomes a platonic example toward his Hmong neighbors. He says racist things to them and acts bothered by their help, but even they don't seem to buy it.
• Unusual Euphemism: "Christ All Friday." Possibly meant as a Curse of The Ancients as well.
• Vigilante Injustice: Walt's attempt to help the Vang Lor family by assaulting a gang member leads to a drive-by shooting, the injury of Thao, and the kidnapping and rape of Sue. While Thao desires revenge, Walt imprisons him so he can't take revenge since Walt knows from experience that killing others isn't as glorious as Thao thinks. Walt instead orchestrates his own death, sacrificing himself so that Spider and the gang can be arrested.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: Walt's idea of male friendship is based around this setup, as shown with his barber and the construction foreman, and later Thao. Walt and Sue also have this going: she is the only Hmong he really respects at first because she refuses to take any crap from him.
• War Is Hell: Walt's monologue to Thao near the end of the movie in a way of persuading him to not get involved in killing someone:
  Walt: You want to know what it's like to kill a man? Well it's goddamn awful, that's what it is. The only thing worse is getting a medal of valor for killing some poor kid that wanted to 'just give up, that's all.' Yeah, some scared little gook just like you. I shot him right in the face with that rifle you were holding in there a while ago. There's not a day goes by that I don't think about it. You don't want that on your soul. But I got blood on my hands. I'm soiled. That's why I'm going in alone tonight.
• What Does She See in Him?: Lampshaded when Walt is talking to Thao about attracting women, when he mentions that he, an unpleasant man, managed to marry a wonderful woman like his late wife.
• White Man's Burden: Although Walt is bigoted in the beginning, he starts to take compassion to the Hmongs, eventually takes Thao under his wing and saves him from Spider's gang, and eventually manages to put away the gang for good by giving their neighbors a chance to speak out against them when he's murdered.
• Wrestler in All of Us: A blink if you miss moment, but before Walt steps out with his gun to stop the gang from dragging Thao, Sue bulldogs one of the members grabbing him.
• Wrong Insult Offence: This exchange occurs between Walt and Sue, a spunky teenaged member of the Hmong family who'd moved in next door, concerning an old stereotype about Asians eating dogs:
  Sue Lor: There's a ton of food.
  Walt Kowalski: Yeah, well, just keep your hands off my dog.
  Sue Lor: No worries, we only eat cats.
• You're Not My Father: While they don't actually say this, it's clear Walt's two sons have irreconcilably denounced/disowned him as their father long before the film's events due to their established distant relationship, only caring to hope for his impeding death out of Irrational Hatred behind his back to relieve them of his existence to completely inherit his precious belongings for their own ends. However, they do express some grief at his funeral, one of them noticeably having tears in his eyes.
• Your Days Are Numbered: A longtime smoker, Walt suffers from coughing fits, occasionally coughing up blood. When he finally goes to see a doctor about it, it's made clear he doesn't have long to live, making his Heroic Sacrifice all the more understandable.

---