Wes Anderson’s Fantastic Mr. Fox is fresh and wonderful. Based on the Roald Dahl novel of the same name, it is what the child inside me has longed to see since The Nightmare Before Christmas. It’s witty enough in dialogue to keep adults entertained and playful enough to keep young children captivated.

Visually, Fantastic is radiant beyond imagination. The stop-motion animation gives it a unique feel; if it had been made with computer-generated animation like a Pixar movie, the cartooniness would have taken over. Sure, The Incredibles received great acclaim in its attempts to mimic a blockbuster, but it could have easily been shot as a live action film.

Anderson took advantage of the animation style to bring the audience closer to the film and perform shots “that you can’t do in live action,” he says in the New York Times’ “Anatomy of a Scene” film commentary clips. “There’s freedom that we got from working this way that I really enjoyed,” he adds. The scenes in particular are done with what-may-seem-cheesy-if-done-wrong Looney Toons-style thematics. A perfect example is when the camera pulls back to reveal the entire cross section of underground tunnels, or the literally confused eyes of Mr. Fox and his friend Kylie.

The story is also one that suits all kinds. Mr. Fox goes out to steal chickens. This plot, however, quickly turns against him. The antagonist farmers go after not only him, but his friends and family as well. There is suspense and anticipation gripping in every scene, while its despondency is kept at a minimum – which was the downfall of last month’s release Where the Wild Things Are. If you can, pony up the money and see this movie in theatres. It is truly fantastic.

There are two commonalities among most of the television networks: they produce mystery crime dramas, and they all suck. Fortunately, NBC has come to the rescue once again with its new show Community.

Community derives its name from the location and premise of the show: community college. Perhaps by happenstance, but more likely on purpose, the show’s creation comes at a time when real community colleges are being put into the spotlight—TIME Magazine recently ran an article on the subject: “Can Community Colleges Save the U.S. Economy?”

This is all beside the point: the show is absolutely brilliant. Community takes a cliché and turns it on its head. Instead of having the high school quarterback be dreamy, the snarky lawyer be affluent, the old guy be a kook, and the geeky girl be, well, geeky, what if they were all mixed together in a community college? Now the star quarterback has no luster, the snarky lawyer has no affluent job, the old kooky guy is trying to make new friends, and the geeky girl is trying to redefine herself.

The main character of the show, Jeff Winger, the snarky lawyer, is played by Joel McHale the host of The Soup—a show akin to Entertainment Tonight, except purposefully funny. His goal is the same as the other six main characters’: they need to get their college degrees.

The plot is new and fresh, but what makes the show truly great is the cast. Although McHale plays a significant part, he is able to play off of every other character’s quarks much like Jason Bateman in Arrested Development or Tina Fay in 30 Rock.

The people who know the show are passionate about it. I would say get on the bandwagon, but there are not enough people who know about it yet, so there isn’t one. Enough brilliant shows have been cancelled; let’s not let this happen again. Watch it.

The City, screened at Oak St. Cinema on Nov. 19, may sound like any other violent, low-budget, action flick trying to live up to Scorsese or Tarantino. But a clever premise laced with smart subtext and wicked humor makes this a film worth seeing.

“I’d like people to walk away questioning what it is by their nature that makes them entertained by certain aspects of media,” writer/director James Vogel says. “Why do we as an audience expect to see violence and sex in films, and why are we entertained by it?”

Vogel, and his co-writers and stars, Ezra Stead and Greg Hernandez, clearly put a lot of thought into the meaning behind the film’s graphic images. Their story tells of a screenwriting student who falls in love with a charismatic underworld figure while seeking experience to inform his scripts. The relationship between characters Scott and T.K., who get off on the violent acts they commit, is ripe with barely concealed undertones.

“There exists this kind of tension in gangster films, a homosexual subtext,” Vogel says. “Characters who revel in violence are somewhat fascinated with each other.”

Stead also points to the relationship between sex and violence. “Wanting to kill someone for the experience is like trying to lose your virginity,” he says.

Vogel and Stead met as students at Minneapolis Community and Technical College. Vogel asked Stead to help him write the script and star in the film, and Stead suggested his friend Hernandez for the role of T.K. They shot the film in 16 days for a budget of $8,000.

Though pleased with their finished product, the filmmakers are also eager to hear negative responses. “It’s a very personalized experience and a polarized reaction, and that’s what interests me,” Vogel says. Stead agrees. “We’d rather someone hate our film than just brush it off and forget about it,” he adds.
They hope that the next step for The City will be the festival circuit and distribution. The film will be screened again locally at the Minneapolis Underground Film Festival, Dec. 5 at 7 p.m.

alt='FN'/>Set in Minneapolis and St. Paul, nobody is a movie for MSP lovers, artists and indie folk. The movie stars Lindeman (local actor Sam Rosen), a frustrated graduate student at Minneapolis College of Art and Design. After being declared “done with therapy” by his shrink, he struggles to find a way to regain the ever-so-inspiring depression that had guided his previous projects. The drama of the film unfolds as Lindeman becomes more and more frustrated with a looming final critique and only a few ideas for his final sculpture that, in his words, “kinda sucks.” As he experiments with such subjects as death, love, homosexuality and militant veganism, Lindeman realizes whoring himself out to the various philosophies and radical lifestyles of his colleagues will not give him the unique identity he is looking for. He is, instead, nobody, a realization that eventually lends Lindeman the type of motivation he needs.

Written and directed by Rob Perez, the director of Forty Days and Forty Nights, the movie explores the reassuring desperation and endearment of the occasional lack of profundity that even the best artists experience. Aside from a few complete misrepresentations of Minneapolis winters (swimming in a lake in April, brainstorming outside in February), the movie has much to enjoy. Mix pretentious artists, human-sized vegetables, gothic death-centered social circles, an immobile goat and St. Paul’s very own Porky’s restaurant together with some good shots of Minneapolis and an excellent soundtrack, and you’ve got the recipe for a jolly good local movie.

A Serious Man is a dark comedic tragedy that borders on a parable of a dismantled existence. The story is set in 1967 suburban Minnesota and centered on a beyond–unfortunate—possibly curse —middle–aged Jewish father, Larry Gopnik. As a professor of physics at a small university, Larry clings to the routine of his life and the freestanding equations that supposedly describe his surrounding world. He is so far detached from this world that he lingers before he falls—as a cartoon character might after unknowingly speeding off a cliff.

Like most of the Coen brothers’ characters, Larry is a victim of his environment. As an academic living in a middle-class Jewish neighborhood, Larry finds himself lost and beleaguered as his wife leaves him. The man of interest is an elder colleague of Larry’s who has ambition and importance in the community, Sy Ableman (played by a deceptively calm and gregarious Fred Melamed). Additionally, Larry’s disillusioned brother (Richard Kind)­—who is working on a probability map to predict the events of the universe—is falling apart both physically and mentally while living on the couch. Larry’s daughter is preoccupied with stealing money for a planned nose job and his son is smoking weed when he should be preparing for his Bar Mitzvah. At his job, Larry receives a bribe from a Korean student who wants a passing grade while the board responsible for determining his tenure is receiving anonymous letters urging them to not grant him the position. Larry is for the meantime relatively passive in situations; he is undertaking an effort in becoming a righteous—and simple —man.

It’s clear the Coen brothers have taken much pleasure in finding ways to torture their protagonist. They treat all of Larry’s problems with the same amount of humor and importance—from the petty issues concerning his neighbor mowing over the property line to the more serious dissolution of his marriage. A face readily recognized and lauded in the New York theatre scene, Michael Stuhlbarg, plays Larry in the film. Stuhlbarg, like most of the cast of A Serious Man, remains relatively unknown to moviegoers—a reportedly conscious effort by the Coens.

The film is pieced together like an unsympathetic homage to middle-class Midwestern Jewish life. While it may be one of the first explorations of this life in film, the story still feels dry. The struggle Larry goes through is the struggle of many others, but the universality of the story doesn’t hold strong. Perhaps this is because of the Coen brothers’ blatant disregard for their character’s well being.

Larry confronts the disintegration of his life­—after some prompting from both his peers and a divorce attorney who acts as one of Larry’s/Job comforters—by consulting a rabbi. The senior rabbi is, of course, occupied. Larry is forced to resort to consulting two lower-ranking rabbis. The consultation of multiple rabbis is a play on the importance of questioning in the Jewish faith. But just as the passive and increasingly neurotic professor is left with no answers after either consultation, the repetition adds little of anything other than comedic effect for the audience.

Because the film simultaneously occupies and exhibits the milieu of Jewish values, Midwestern lifestyle and ’60s culture, the humor of the film is diffused and then concentrated across the domains of culture, geography, and generation. This means that while the film appeals to a wide audience —perhaps through the absurdity of the situations themselves—references to Ron Meshbesher will be lost on many moviegoers.

The Coens have proved themselves as experts at analyzing sub-subcultures. Just as Fargo encompasses its own stereotypical Minnesotan world or Barton Fink and its exploration of entertainment writing in 1940s Hollywood, A Serious Man is another self-contained effort. This time the Coen brothers turn to a more familiar setting and have succeeded in pointing to all the nuances while crafting a story that is, in a way, all-encompassing.

The world of Larry Gopnik has been created with perhaps more intimacy than any of their other films. Having been raised in a Jewish community in St. Louis Park by parents both from academia, the film is closest to home for Joel and Ethan. Yet there is no restraint in the situations the Coens pushed their protagonist through. In comparison to their other films it lacks the blood that has splattered over every other character, yet the situation—the meaninglessness and dryness that the story is presented in—could not be harsher.

Cinematographer Roger Deakins returns from a brief Coen brothers hiatus to wonderfully capture the quintessence of the late ’60s suburban Jewish neighborhood. The freshly constructed suburban homes seem to already occupy their own faded glory in a treeless and otherwise empty neighborhood captured in Bloomington, Minnesota. The shots are crisp like fall weather—we can already taste the death that occupies the scenes. Less of the sweeping, wide-angled shots that characterized many of the Coen brothers’ previous films impart the feeling of being enclosed in a suburb with little place to turn to or vent. Deakins utilizes hard-focuses and close-ups to reinforce the shallow intimacy viewers take from the storyline.

Despite the visually striking composition of the film, the film fails to create a strong connection between Larry and the audience in order for his struggle for meaning to be worth following. This may be a deliberate superficiality by the Coen brothers. Though, the brothers have little to say of their satisfaction with A Serious Man: “[the film is] Okay.”

The strong points of the film stem from its somewhat enigmatic trailer. The trailer opens with Larry Gopnik’s head repeatedly being slammed into a chalkboard by Sy Ableman. There’s an unsettling, partly unconscious, impression as the sound of a head meeting chalkboard runs through the film’s trailer. It’s a brilliant representation of what is seen in the movie: Here is our protagonist being thrown from one disruptive and sometimes-horrific situation to the next with the same result. While Larry searches for answers, in a quest to be a serious man, he only encounters the same hollow message: the Coen brothers are cold-hearted misanthropes.

One thing is for sure about The Informant! and it’s that Matt Damon is definitely not the same crisis-ridden amnesiac America fell in love with. Based on Kurt Eichenwald’s 2000 book, Damon stars as Mark Whitacre, a seemingly inept and neurotic biochemist who blows the whistle on his company’s global price-fixing scheme only to become a victim of his own head-scratching recklessness. The story begins in the early ‘90s where Whitacre’s employer, Archer Daniels Midland, a highly recognized agricultural conglomerate, has been working in collusion with their competitors to fix the price of lysine, a ubiquitous food additive. When two FBI agents arrive at ADM to investigate a possible industrial sabotage, Whitacre, posing as an honest man, confides in the FBI agents and reveals the details of the scheme. Whitacre is then thrust headlong into a quirky yet consistently hilarious journey, operating as an informant in the investigation while continuing to work at ADM.

Almost everything about Soderbergh’s film is off-kilter. From the dimly lit meeting rooms to the cheery lounge jazz that plays in between scenes, The Informant! is disorienting at times. However, Damon’s impeccable performance and Scott Z. Burns’ (The Bourne Ultimatum) sharp writing compensate for its eccentricity. The film’s ongoing voiceovers are a definite highlight and reveal Whitacre’s utter detachment from reality, most notably the scene where he contemplates polar-bear hunting techniques while speaking to the FBI agents. While The Informant! isn’t flawless, it is a solid and well-executed departure from Soderbergh’s and Damon’s typical standbys.

Unlike the recent regeneration of old-man clout in the music industry (Morrisey! Leonard Cohen! Yes, they’re still alive.), the film industry has been experiencing something a little different. We might call it the Nicolas Cage Phenomenon: a dirty rash of films characterized by disaster, ancient talismans, and men sporting long, formless hairdos that try to combat receding hairlines. That is to say, a bunch of middle-aged actors with exhaustive repertoires, such as Nicolas Cage and Tom Hanks, have been turning out increasingly successful but mediocre films.

Besides telling them to JUST CUT IT OFF! Bald is distinguished!, it might help to remind these guys that their current fame rides on their quirky roles from the past. There’s no point hoping actors will relinquish the way they make big bucks. But as movie-goers, we can at least try to appreciate what once was.

Consider Nick Cage himself: he hasn’t delivered a solid performance since Matchstick Men. But despite his current every-man characters, Cage is an excellent performer. When he’s on his game, he is particularly suited for the southern outlaw character, a role he has consistently delivered on several occasions, including Wild at Heart, Raising Arizona, and Rumblefish. His dedication to fully assuming a role is especially evident in Wild at Heart. In the film, the Snakeskin jacket that becomes a symbol of Sailor Ripley’s eccentricity was not originally in the script or the book. It was Cage’s suggested to director David Lynch. Lynch wrote the idea into the film, and it has since become one of the things to iconify the character of Sailor Ripley. At no point does the character ever come off as unbelievable.

Another memorable Cage performance is his role in Leaving Las Vegas, for which he won the best actor Oscar. Cage portrays a man who has been laid off and goes to Vegas to drink himself to death. Cage brings an essential level of sadness to the character that a lesser actor might not have been able to capture. His task was to create a despicable drunk, but at the same time a completely redeemable individual. Cage does this so well that you can’t help but follow his every emotional up and down.

Perhaps Cage’s best performance, however, is in Adaptation. In this film, Cage succeeds in crafting not one, but two magnificent characters. Charlie Kauffman is a fast-talking, overweight, middle aged screenwriter based on the actual screenwriter Charlie Kauffman. Donald is his fictionalized twin brother, struggling to survive by trying his hand at screen writing. When Donald begins to succeed, it brings out the dejected, subtle depression of sibling rivalry in Charles, mixed with his disappointment of being overshadowed by a first-timer in his craft. At the same time, Cage is able to maintain the sort of ignorant success of Donald who is only too happy with himself and completely ignorant of his brother’s true feelings.

ational Treasure and its sequel, The Book of Secrets, might have collectively grossed over $200 million, but their plot-driven and sensationalist popularity will never match the studied and eccentric qualities of films like Adaptation and Wild at Heart. While actors like Cage and Hanks may stray into roles fit for box office success, there are still some fans out there who’d like the old Cage back.

Watchmen has been in various stages of conception since the late eighties, and bears a weight of geek scrutiny which is almost unprecedented. Unfortunately, the lauded trailer shown with The Dark Knight was masterful compared to the final product.

Director Zack Snyder (Dawn Of The Dead [2004], 300[2007]) has chosen to remain visually faithful to the source material to the degree that it is a liability against the film. Trimmed segments, which are extensive and necessary, are not accounted for, and the film never eases into its own identity. Enough of the irrelevant is preserved, and too much thematic exposition is canned for the film to be anything but a jumbled mess. Context is often ignored in the interest of shot-for-shot reproduction of a graphic novel, which is itself flawed. Most of the principal acting ranges from adequate to outstanding. The Comedian and Rorschach, in particular, are very well adapted and understood by their respective actors, Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Jackie Earl Haley. The film’s actors will receive an exposure bump – assuming, as the film’s promo material states, that justice truly comes to us all.

The film falters in bringing the thematic depth of the graphic novel to life, and seems to enjoy earning its ‘R’ rating in ways that are irrelevant and contrary to the source material’s handling. The kitschy, obtusely iconic soundtrack is mixed annoyingly loudly and was inappropriately chosen. In contrast, the film’s score is often elegantly understated and filled with ambient synths evoking a casual, effective period immersion. This distinction is analogous to the film itself. Watchmen flies when it does the minor due diligence of appropriating the material for itself, and it fails spectacularly when it drag-and-drops the work of others without consideration or context. Aside from bringing attention to some worthy and devout actors, one hesitates to imagine what good will come of this exercise in medium-swapping.

“Nothing can take away what happened to us, but we are survivors.”

These words begin to describe only a minute part of an even larger saga of war, fear, regret and wounds that time may never heal. Doan Hoang relives painful events in her family’s past with her new documentary film Oh, Saigon. The lens cap is removed as her family reveals shocking truths and opinions about their last minute escape from Vietnam. Under the shadow of war, Hoang’s family falls to pieces.

Hoang’s method of filming is simple. With camera in hand, she and her film crew keep a close watch on the subject. With no screen and no script, it brings out the genuine emotions.

“If I could put my finger on the moment my family fell apart, it would be April 13, 1975, the end of the Vietnam War,” says Hoang during the film’s opening scenes. It was something that would haunt every one of them for some thirty odd years, but no one ever talked about it. Always told by her parents that they would eventually return to Vietnam, Hoang became disenchanted when nothing came of it.

“After a while, you realize that it’s not going to happen. There was a sense of separation and loss.” A mixture of homesickness and curiosity got the better of Hoang and her thoughts began to spin the film early on. “I first wrote about the movie when I was eight. It was just something on my mind, it was so upsetting.” This fateful revelation planted a seed; a seed that grew over time.

History in any country has a tinge of biased documentation. The thoughts and emotions of “the bad guys” are never really looked into and the “other” perspective is never gained. Reading a history book or listening in history class is almost always done with an inquisitive ear, but always from a safe distance. The half-lidded expression of most students reflects the attitude. These things happened in the past, there must be some relevance to people now, something that should be learned. Yet what is written is accepted without deeper thought given to the subject matter.

“Why were the stories my parents told me so different from what I was getting in school?” Hoang asked. Where was the disconnect between the oral history she received from her parents and what the American textbooks were teaching her. Several papers, much research and a thesis later, Hoang’s curiosity would no longer sit dormant. “The more I found out, the more I wanted to write about family.” It was war that damaged the family, and the family who told the story.

However, re-opening wounds which have barely healed hurts a lot.

Hoang stated that before making the film, she never had a desirable relationship with her father. “I really knew nothing about him,” she says. Getting him to relive days gone by was an arduous task. “He didn’t have the nerve to tell me he didn’t want to be interviewed.” So he avoided it, and avoided it. Though all he really needed was a good push. Once the floodgates opened, there was no ebbing the flow. “When he started talking about Vietnam, he just couldn’t stop.”

The growth of Hoang’s relationship with her parents is well documented in Saigon as she doesn’t shy away from pulling the details out of her family members. In the process she learns that her parents were like any normal married couple with children. From her mother, Anne, and her socialite upbringing to her father, Nam, and his bashful pride when he says, “Your mother could have had anyone, but she chose me.” These indispensible tidbits which children rarely discover about their parents are gems in Saigon. Even down to the hidden family members and what they mean to the rest.

Like Uncle Hai, Nam’s older brother who had passionately supported Vietnam’s Communist party most his life, right up until his death in 2007. Despite the blood bond between them, the two brothers never agreed on the subject of politics. Then there is the harrowing journey of Hoang’s older half-sister, Van. A last minute decision by Hoang’s parents left Van behind in Vietnam. Eventually reaching the United States years later, Van will not let go and she won’t let her mother forget the decisions that were made. Although Doan’s mother continually says it was Van’s fault she was left behind, she still cannot hide the guilt. “We had no choice,” she cries and says sorry again and again. “We had to think of the family. I’m so sorry.”

For a good portion of the film, it seems as if thirty years have healed nothing. The emotions which ran rampant in those last days of Saigon are still as raw with every small mention. Hoang’s parents burst out in defense of their actions that day with an irony which is almost laughable. As they make their way to Saigon, city by city, tempers fall short as Van falls behind, again. “She always does this,” Doan’s mother says of Van’s lateness. “We should just leave her behind. Let her get a taxi.” Such attitudes die hard. The biting emotion is still there. People feel guilt but the events of the past block the reconciliation and the anger remains.

As Hoang says, there is a sense of loss in this film, a void that can never be filled to the brim. As the entire family returns to Vietnam on the second journey, the camera stays close on the heels of Nam, Anne and Van. Their words and their faces reflect unfulfilled expectations. They were no longer the people they used to be and the image they had of their home had changed.

“When you leave a country, it’s like that place is frozen in time. That’s what you expect when you come back,” Hoang says of her parent’s sentiments. “They lost out on the prime of their lives. My parents were always looking to come home, and when they did, Vietnam had changed.”

The Hoang family as a whole changed. After a life of American education, American workplaces and American culture, the Hoangs were strangers when they returned to Vietnam. Then again, they were strangers from the moment the war started.

As the South Vietnamese fled Saigon, there was one word used to refer to them: traitors. The Communists took over the government with the fall of Saigon and those of differing opinion were slapped with the title of traitor and had the possibility of death hanging over their heads. Saigon’s barefaced honesty and rolling tapes captured the aftermath of war that was still going on, and the hypocrisy of it all.

“When we came back with money, they called us ‘oversea patriots’,” says Naht Bang, the Vietnamese teaching specialist at the University of Minnesota, and audience member at Saigon. “The economy depends on money from overseas Vietnamese.”

The government of equality was seen from different perspectives: those who fought for it, like Uncle Hai, and those who found no value in it, like Nam. This two-faced standpoint is something American viewers don’t expect. Saigon does not want people to look at Uncle Hai as a crazed Communist. The words coming out of his mouth were genuine and full of the same things Nam still feels, conviction in the belief that their way of life could protect those they loved. Even the neutral felt the same thing.

“I didn’t have any ideals at all, but I was still forced to fight,” says Nam’s younger brother, Dzung, who, with a toothy smile, describes himself as a coward. “I didn’t think anything about capitalism or communism. You live under a government, and they make you fight. There’s nothing you can do.” Recognizing the fact that he had a family to care for, he made a choice. Though really, one has to consider the question, was Uncle Dzung’s choice any different or less valid than Nam, Uncle Hai, or Anna’s? They all made a decision for their family, for their beliefs. The consequences are still there and the ‘why’ is still being searched for.

This loss hangs over the heads of all the characters, each of them looking out for answers in Vietnam, but not finding much.

A bittersweet homecoming awaited them. Nam, being a pilot in the South Vietnamese army, getting out was his only option. “I had to leave,” he says in an interview with Hoang. “I didn’t have any other roads to choose. I could have been imprisoned by the Communists. I could have been killed right there.” For years he lived with that title over his head, never being able to go back, not able to bear the reality of a Communist government.

When they did return, a different Vietnam greeted them. They were no longer known as traitors, but they weren’t seen as true Vietnamese. They were the outsiders.

As time went on, however, the attitude changed. The economy had gone weak and the people who had the money were the traitors who had left Vietnam and “did nothing for the country,” as Nam`s older brother says.

“Tell your dad to come back,” laughes Uncle Dzung, “He’s called an ‘overseas patriot’ now.”

As much as the making of Oh, Saigon was a journey for Doan Hoang, it was just as much of an eye opening experience for the audience, many of whom were Vietnamese and some who escaped Saigon in those last few treacherous months.

“It is really about getting back to the roots, but then you can’t find yourself there. You are not Vietnamese,” says Bang, who empathizes the emotions of Nam and Anne in Saigon.

“It was pretty cool. It showed me a different perspective from what I would usually assume,” says Hoang Nguyn, a University of Minnesota student.

Such comments were shared by many, Vietnamese or not.

“Growing up here, I never got the Vietnamese perspective,” says another audience member, an American male, also a student.

How many mainstream films out there depict the Vietnam War and its aftermath in such a way as Oh, Saigon? When a person mentions ‘Vietnam’ and ‘film’ in the same sentence such movies as Apocalypse Now! and Rambo immediately come to mind. Really, what do these movies show us? Whose eyes are we looking through when we press play, and what are they saying to us? Really, how much do you know about the Vietnam War? Think about how it has affected you, your family, and everyone connected to you? That is what Hoang was and is thinking, what she is trying to explore.

Because right down to it, Oh, Saigon is about family and reconciliation. It’s forcing us to ask the question: how well do we really know our parents, our siblings, our country? How do the choices they made decide how we live our lives? The everlasting ‘why’ of their ways should be delved into, even if all the answers are not there.

There will be things lost, things forgotten and never retrieved. Then there are the things which you decide for yourself. As Hoang said to the audience, “Every experience, no matter how negative, you can turn it around.” There is no running from these things. The decisions made by the character in Oh, Saigon were with them always, and still are, but they have begun to turn it around. They look to themselves and their family, and they learn.

Clint Eastwood’s latest undertaking, Gran Torino, did not fail movie buffs and car fanatics this winter season (it did, however, fail to meet Oscar standards). Critics love the dynamic characters and chronicled dark history of the Hmong culture, and how it has basically informed the entire country of Hmong people’s existence. Set in a Detroit family suburb turned ghetto, Torino reports on the gangbanging nature of this neighborhood and the culture clashes that follow.

What’s surprising to know is that the roots of the film lie in Minneapolis and St. Paul. Bee Vang, who plays the shy Thao bullied by the local gang, resides in a suburb north of the cities. Like most of the actors, he was cast without any previous acting experience. In search of completely authentic Hmong roles, casting directors stationed themselves in St. Paul, Fresno, and Detroit—the areas with the largest Hmong populations in the U.S., respectively. The screenplay was composed at Grumpy’s Bar in Minneapolis as well, written after-hours by then-truck driver Nick Schenck. When unwinding from a physically draining day at work. His past experiences paved the way of script details—after meeting war veterans at the liquor shop Schenck worked at, and befriending Hmong co-workers at another factory job, the ideas conglomerated. The film was originally set within the wintry borders of Minnesota, but once the Warner Brothers became involved, this location was moved to Michigan for a measly reason—a whopping 42 percent tax break. After this, the original script has been said to receive only minor alterations.

Korean War veteran Walt Kowalski (Eastwood) lives a bitterly agreeable life alongside cheerful Hmong neighbors, colliding with them in the form of hilariously racist remarks, and soon after, sappy friendships. His hatred toward the immigrants builds the action and keeps it going, but fundamentally, it acknowledges that racism, after many years, is still alive. As director, Eastwood encouraged all Hmong actors to ad-lib in their native language. Some of those lines turned out to be pitfalls, having since been deemed inaccurate and condescending representations of social stereotypes by other Hmong people.

Gran Torino takes place in a suburb of Detroit called Highland Park. The dingy aspects of the old factory town are shown well, yet some demographical statistics do not quite match up. For instance, Highland Park is predominantly African American—ninety-three percent, while Asians comprise only a quarter percent of the population. The film drew solely on white and Hmong characters, displaying a sort of neighborhood that Highland Park is not. Not enough to produce a Hmong gang, at least. In retrospect, the American Community Survey estimated Hmong population in Minnesota to exceed 60,000 in 2006, which includes only registered residents. The first Hmong gang is said to have originated in St. Paul in the mid-eighties to give teenagers protection from brutal racism that they frequently encountered. Petty crimes defined their acts of retribution at first, and with bands branching out and multiplying, the activities quickly transformed into violent thefts, assaults, and rapes. Torino simulates these crimes with many gory scenes of attacks on non-members as well as the turning-point rape of Sue.

The film focuses on the younger generation of Hmong in America. Immigration has different effects on all ages, causing divergences in families. “Old school” ways of living don’t stick well with teenagers trying to Americanize and consequentially, they break out into gangs attempting to build a place for themselves in the social hierarchy. Producers strove to stay true to Hmong customs enough to hire a cultural consultant, the director of the Hmong Arts Connection in St. Paul. Hang Garvey was on set during filming, helping to cast Hmong actors and preserve traditions. The shaman ritual at the birth of a child, handshake use, and the humble personality of the Hmong reflected their culture to its true extent.

Gran Torino’s intense moments of distress balanced well with comical insertions, but nonetheless exemplified a way of life unknown to audiences across the country. Along with Eastwood’s performance and heroic tactics, we are also reminded that the Twin Cities are Hollywood-worthy relics.