I SAW Gran Torino a few days ago and got misty-eyed watching a cranky old man called Walt putting bad things to rights.
Walt - played by the granite-solid Clint Eastwood in this movie about faith and redemption - shrugs off the praise and says: 'I’m not a hero'. But, yes, you are, the feisty girl from next door insists.
Walt has just sent some Hmong hooligans packing with his steely eyes, unwavering firm voice and steady finger on the trigger of a mean gun. They had come to harass her brother into joining the gang.
She later tells Walt that he is the role model her brother never had.
I was lucky enough to find my own hero in my teenage years.
My father died when I was 12, and my uncle stepped in to fill the void.
He gave my three sisters and me love and attention, made sure we stayed on the right track and - crucially - provided us with money.
It was not easy for my mother - or most women in those days – to find work so she had to do odd jobs.
Life was tough but my uncle made it easier with his weekly 32km motorbike ride to come and check on us.
I’m ashamed to say that I have not thought about him for a long time - until the movie came along.
Some five years have gone by since his death from a lung ailment. It was not easy to visit him in hospital then and see a pale shadow of his once gregarious self.
He couldn’t understand either why a good man like him had been dealt a bad health card. I had no answer for that and didn’t know how to comfort him.
At the funeral, I did not quite know what to say to my aunty either. But I did thank my uncle in my fervent prayers before his body was cremated.
Watching Gran Torino last week in Tampines connected me to all those memories.
Unlike Walt, my uncle never had to confront and bash up bullies. But like Walt, he also showed by deed and action what life could be if you never strayed from the path of hard work, honesty and thrift.
My uncle went the extra mile for us - as did Walt for the Hmong teens he befriended.
I did not up and go when the movie ended. I stayed to watch the long list of credits roll. I was not the only one who was made more pensive by the haunting voice of Jamie Cullum singing the movie’s theme song.
There were at least two dozen people that evening in Tampines who also did not vacate their seats.
I was sure all of them had been moved deeply by Walt’s actions and surely were thinking about folks who had stood up for them once upon a time - or even now.