Clint Eastwood growls his way through this movie of an angry old man finding new friends in the least likely of places. Namely in the new Hmong neighbors living next door. Walt (Eastwood) is retired from the Ford plant where he worked his whole life, and the movie opens with the funeral for his wife. His two sons, bratty grandkids in tow, have no connection with him. They regard him with something bordering on zoological curiosity, mixed with a hint of guilt and obligation. They want him to behave like a nice old man and move into a peaceful retirement community instead of stubbornly sticking to his decaying neighborhood.
The young priest who performed his wife’s funeral service promised his wife that he would look after Walt. This is annoying to Walt, and at times is annoying to the audience. When the young Hmong brother and sister next door get hassled by a local gang of thugs (ostensibly to bring the boy, Thao, into the gang), Walt gets involved because they step on his lawn. He demonstrates his displeasure with a shotgun. Standing up to the gang makes him a hero in the eyes of his neighbors whose persistence in being neighborly eventually wears down Walt’s defenses. He learns how to be a father, though it’s not clear why it didn’t work with his own kids. We must assume that they were innately callow. While the movie is not ground-breaking, it is touching, and it is genuinely fun to see Eastwood growling and kicking his way through the mess that encroaches on him.