Eastwood's Waltz with Walt

Films can really move you at times. I saw one such film earlier in the morning today. One that I had been planning to watch for years now. The movie name: Gran Torino. A Clint Eastwood film. It's about an angry old Korean war veteran named Walt Kowalski (played by Eastwood himself) living in the part of Detroit which is populated with poor Asian community and infested with local gang bangers. The recently widowed soldier lives angry at the world and alienated from his children. Children, who he feels, are only after his property. There is one more thing, though, that everybody seems to want from him and that is his Gran Torino. A sleek old American car that he has had since the 70s. Walt's young neighbor, Thao, is pressured by his cousin into stealing Walt's prized 1972 Ford Gran Torino for his initiation into a gang. Walt thwarts the theft and later develops a relationship with the boy and his family. Walt's next door neighbors are Hmong people of the Korean Hills. From a different culture entirely. But Walt seems to like their ways more than he does of his own children. Children who would call him only if they needed or wanted something from him. So, when Walt saves Sue, Thao's sister, from being attacked by the roadside goons, her family begins showering his doorstep with bouquets and gifts everyday. They offer their son, Thao, for two weeks just so he can help him with his household stuffs or whatever else he wants him to do in penance for the attempted theft of his car which was a job forced on Thao by his cousin and local ruffians. During this period, Walt teaches Thao many things which truly reform him. 
But the most moving part of the story is how Walt selflessly sacrifices his life just so he can allow Sue and Thao to live a life of peace. This happens as the gang's crimes reach the height when they end up shooting all over Thao's house and raping Sue. But the police can't do anything  as no one would open their mouths to talk about it. Not even Thao's family. And though Thao approaches Walt to help him take vengeance against his sister's perpetrators. Walt has something else on his mind. He expresses his concern to father Jonovich by saying that as long as these gangs are around, Sue and Thao will never be able to live in peace.
That night, he walks up to the gang's home in the night talking and berating them loudly thus drawing the attention of the neighbors. Putting a cigarette in his mouth, he asks for a lighter. And then provocatively puts his hand in his jacket and pulls it out as if her were holding a gun inciting the gang members to shoot and kill him. The gang members are arrested for murder and the neighbors come forward to testify as witnesses.  
With the gang gone to jail, Thao and Sue are now able to do what they never could before. Live peacefully. Walt, who had lived his whole life like a hero, perhaps could not think of a better way to die than by helping someone in the process. In his will, he leaves nothing for his self-centered children and donates his house to the Church. He says in the will that that's what his departed wife Dorothy would have liked. His Gran Torino he gives to Thao on the condition that he doesn't modify it. To his neighborhood priest, with whom he always debated about the meaning of life and death, he leaves a lesson. That life is better when lived being of someone's use than not.