When the stubborn man cooks steaks for his new friends and teaches Tao to get a construction work and lends his Gran Torino to him for his first date, his face looks like a happy child. However, the vicious environment doesn’t leave their small happiness alone. The gang lynches Tao down, robbing his tool for the work. Walt reacts as his heart moves: retaliation. But the outcome of that is greater than he could bear. The Tao’s house was machinegun-shot and Sue was kidnapped, violated and raped. For that, Walt the strong man who never shows emotion tears.
Once his mind decides what to do, he follows the unusual routine: smoking in the tub, getting haircut and paying the double, having a new suit and going to the confession. This is a true face of Walt, hidden but a fragile, kind man whom we can find anywhere. His last lesson for Tao is special because he probably says what he felt for the first time when he killed people in the war: “I’ve thought about that kid (I shot) for fifty years. And I promise you, boy, you want no part of it. Me, I’ve got blood on my hands. I’m soiled…I’m proud to call you a friend. You have your whole life ahead of you, whereas this is what I do. I finish things. You’d just get in the way.”
Walt confronts the gang whom he could easily kill with his gun. But the way he chooses is no longer his way of reaction to violence. He triggers the gang and pretends to put out a gun for which the gang brutally shot him to death. It is an end, the end of violence and retaliation. But the redemptive beginning for Tao, maybe for Sue as well. By letting him shot by the gang, Walt shows his deep faith that no one dares to ask. He says Hail Mary at the end of his life, and leaves his whole possession to the church except the Gran Torino, the icon of Walt, given to Tao as a gift of friendship.
Martin Luther King said, “Violence, even in self-defense, creates more problems than it solves. Only a refusal to hate or kill can put an end to the chain of violence in the world and lead us toward a community where men can live together without fear. If nonviolence is, the only road to freedom, we must not allow it to become the road not taken.”
Walt takes the road not taken and trades his life for it. As he sings, “My world is nothing more than all the tiny things I’ve left behind,” we know his Gran Torino beats a lonely rhythm all night long. It is the rhythm that we all have.