While Clint Eastwood's new movie "Gran Torino" won't be getting its nationwide release until tomorrow, you've surely seen the trailer. You know, the one that has Clint confronting a trio of urban toughs and growling, "Ever notice you come across someone once in a while you shouldn't have messed with ... well that's me."

Thirty-seven years after "Dirty Harry," are you still buying it? Sure, we all want to see Eastwood sneer at his neighbors, and tell them to get off his lawn, because that's what over-the-hill tough guys do. But is it possible a 78-year-old actor using catch phrases and faux finger guns to stare down thugs one quarter of his age might just become the nuked fridge of 2009?

After the jump, watch the trailer and help us figure out if Clint still has what it takes to intimidate punks and clean up a town.

He sure does!
Having seen the movie, we can report that although Eastwood is playing a character named Walt Kowlaski, he makes no thespian effort to disguise the fact that it is Clint Eastwood on the screen. Throughout the film, Eastwood consciously exaggerates the characteristics of the cranky, squint-eyed, gravel-voiced, take-no-guff antihero he created decades ago. Even if Kowalski's 17-year-old antagonists had never seen "Dirty Harry" or "Unforgiven," this archetype, which Clint so heartily injects into Walt Kowalski, has seeped into the psyche of all Americans -- real or fictional. Maybe that doesn't make a thug jacked up on the streets quake in his boots, but it's enough to get him to stand up straight and take notice.

Please ...
Eastwood is playing a Korean War Veteran, making him at least in his mid-70s. America's nursing homes are full of grizzled old vets, who would like nothing more than to toss their bingo tickets aside and restore order to their fading city -- as Eastwood's Kowalski does for Detroit in "Gran Torino." But you know why we don't have teams of senior citizens patrolling our mean streets? Because they are too damn old. Septuagenarians can do almost anything us younger folk can -- including making some pretty great movies. Although if Eastwood continues with his ridiculous Inspector Harry Callahan revival, we might have to start questioning that.