Set in Highland Park, Michigan, the story follows Walt Kowalski, a recently widowed Korean War veteran alienated from his family and angry at the world, whose young neighbor, Thao Vang Lor, is pressured by his cousin into stealing Walt's prized Ford Torino for his initiation into a gang.

Gran Torino opened with a limited theatrical release in the United States on December 12, 2008, before expanding wide on January 9, 2009.

Recently widowed Walt Kowalski is a cantankerous and prejudiced Korean War veteran and retired Ford factory worker.

His Rust Belt neighborhood in Metro Detroit has become ridden with gang violence and poor Hmong immigrants, including Walt's next-door neighbors, the Vang Lor family.

Walt is estranged from his spoiled family, and on his 80th birthday, angrily rejects his son's suggestion that he move to a retirement community in favor of living alone with his elderly labrador Daisy.

Thao Vang Lor is coerced by a Hmong gang led by his cousin, "Spider", to steal Walt's 1972 Ford Torino as an initiation.

When the gang tries to abduct Thao forcefully, Walt scares them off with his M1 Garand rifle, earning the local Hmong community's respect.

Walt puts a cigarette in his mouth, slowly reaches into his jacket pocket, and pulls his hand out quickly.

[15] According to Schenk, each night he used a pen and paper to write the script while in Grumpy's, a bar in Northeast Minneapolis, while not working at his day jobs.

Bruce Headlam of The New York Times wrote: "That helped make it easy for Warner Bros. to sign off on bankrolling the movie, something that hasn't always been a given in the studio's relationship with the director.

In regard to Schenk's stories of his interactions with the Hmong people, Laura Yuen of Minnesota Public Radio said: "That sense of humor and curiosity permeate the script, even though the Gran Torino trailers make the movie look like, by all measures, a drama.

[13] Dyane Hang Garvey served as a cultural consultant, giving advice on names, traditions, and translations.

[29] In a 2011 program Vang said that Hmong actors were treated unfairly on the set, and that Eastwood did not give tips on how to build the characters.

[28][26] Bee Vang, as paraphrased by Jeff Baenen of the Associated Press, said in 2009 that the film's portrayal of the Hmong is "generally accurate.

Cedric Lee,[26] a half-Hmong[30] who worked as a production assistant and a cultural consultant, said that "Some things were over-exaggerated for dramatic purposes.

In the film the shaman himself does a sacrifice of a chicken in a manner that Schein and Thoj say is "in dramatic ceremonial fashion," when in real life an assistant would do this "perfunctorily.

"[32] The authors said that the hu plis ceremony done in honor of the baby has an incorrect spatial layout, that the clothing and grooming of the Hmong gangs is not correct, and "the obsequious making of offerings on doorstep" are not accurate.

"[35] Her added, "An early draft of the script even had names misspelled and referenced Chinese surnames, a sloppy mistake that was easily corrected.

[38] The Blu-ray version presents the film in 2.40:1 ratio format, a digital copy, and the audio in multiple languages.

[1] Rotten Tomatoes reports that 81% of 237 surveyed critics gave Gran Torino positive write-ups; the average score is 7.10/10.

The site's consensus states: "Though a minor entry in Eastwood's body of work, Gran Torino is nevertheless a humorous, touching, and intriguing old-school parable.

"[45] Sang Chi and Emily Moberg Robinson, editors of Voices of the Asian-American and Pacific Islander Experience: Volume 1, said that within the mainstream media, the film received "critical acclaim" "for its nuanced portrayal of Asian Americans.

"[46] Louisa Schein and Va-Megn Thoj, authors of "Gran Torino's Boys and Men with Guns: Hmong Perspective," said that the mainstream critical response was "centered on Eastwood's character and viewed the film mainly as a vision of multicultural inclusion and understanding.

"[47] Nicole Sperling, columnist for Entertainment Weekly, called it a drama with "the commercial hook of a genre film" and described it further as "a meditation on tolerance wrapped in the disguise of a movie with a gun-toting Clint Eastwood and a cool car".

[48] Chi and Robinson said that within the Asian-American community, some criticized "depictions of Hmong men" and "the archetypical white savior trope that permeated the film".

"[49] An individual established a blog, eastwoodmovie-hmong.com, documenting what the author believed to be cultural inaccuracies of the film's depiction of the Hmong.

[31] Krissy Reyes-Ortiz of The Bottom Line of the University of California Santa Barbara said, based on Vang's testimony in a 2011 program, that "Though many of the people who have seen the film may have gotten a sense of satisfaction and joy from seeing that Walt overcame his racism, the people who acted as the Hmong members in the movie did not" and that "They were offended by the traces of racism that were included in the movie and that they experienced themselves on set".

[31] Vang added that he engaged in "explaining my obligation as an actor while also recognizing that, as a Hmong American, I didn't feel I could own the lines I was uttering.

[53] Chung argued that "Gran Torino might have been another "'white man saves the day' story" but that "What Eastwood has really created is not a story about the white man saving the minority (though it can be read on that level and I'm sure some will) but a critical examination of an iconic brand of white macho maleness that he played a significant part in creating.

[65] From 2019 onwards, Gran Torino has been part of the focus topic "The Ambiguity of Belonging" in the German Abitur in Baden-Württemberg and Hessen in the subject English.