10 Ridiculous Performances That Totally Derailed A Movie

5. Assorted Hmong Actors (Gran Torino)

This isn't so much one performance but instead a collection of them. The film is focused on a cranky old guy named Walt (Clint Eastwood) who ends up defending the Hmong immigrants living nearby, and Eastwood decided to cast actual Hmong people rather than actors in order to lend the film greater authenticity. The irony is that in casting people who so clearly haven't got a single acting instinct, we are pulled out of the story and the whole thing feels a lot less authentic. It's a real problem because so much of the cast consists of these actors, and they're in almost every scene. The most infamous scene comes when Walt locks one of the Hmong kids, Thao, in his basement. Eastwood is his usual, brilliantly grizzled self, while the kid can't act worth a damn, screaming "What are you doing!?", "Waaaaaaaalt!", "Waaaaaaaalt!", "Let. Me. Out" in the most robotic yet strangely over the top manner possible. What's supposed to be a totally serious scene about Walt teaching the kid a lesson is rendered thigh-slappingly hilarious by this kid's pathetic performance. And the rest of his scenes aren't much better.