Ray Midge's wife Norma took off with her ex, Guy Dupree. Which might not bother Ray too much, except they took his Gran Torino and his credit card when they left. So once Ray gets the credit card bill and knows where they went, he chases after them, in the beater vehicle Dupree left behind.
The trail runs from Arkansas all the way to Belize (called British Honduras at the time), and as Ray bumbles his way south, he encounters many colorful - meaning, irritating - characters and all sorts of problems. With the car, with his lack of foresight, his unimposing and off-putting personality, and so on.
Portis is probably best known for writing True Grit, and I'm surprised, given they filmed the remake of that book, that the Coens haven't ever made of a movie of this thing. It feels similar to their Raising Arizona/Fargo era. Midge is an inept doofus, far more accomplished in his mind than in reality. William H. Macy could play the hell out of this guy. He can't make friends, has no gift for convincing people to help him or listen to him. When he speaks about something of interest to him, others tune out. He dithers, beginning and abandoning plans, experiencing success only when all obstacles have already removed themselves from his path.
The supporting cast is full of people who are a best, a little odd, if not bent in the head. Dr. Reo Symes, who bums a ride with Midge in Mexico, is the most notable. Symes has got opinions about everything and bangs on about them at length. He has a million ideas for what to do with an island his mother owns in Louisiana, if only he can get her to give it to him. During one of his spiels, I realized he reminded me of a guy I've dealt with through work, whose father owned a business we regulate. The son had a bunch of big plans for the land, and would describe them all. He had also apparently gotten his brain chemistry permanently fucked by either taken acid or meth once, and once drove to another state and then tried to rob a convenience store. That was about the vibe Symes gives off.
Through Symes, Midge meets the doc's mother and her friend who run a church in Belize. The friend sits up all night without sleeping somehow, while Symes' mother is in negotiations with a pastor to borrow a Tarzan flick to show the kids, and asks Midge whether he think Jesus really turned water into wine and is he suggesting the Son of God was a bootlegger? The lady who runs the hotel where he stays seems to despise him for some reason that is never explained. There are two Indians who spend every day trying to clear brush from around an ancient pyramid, but the jungle grows back too fast. (Actually there are three, but the other hides in the forest when anyone approaches.) Ray harbors notions of an affair with a woman he meets in Belize, but spends so much time thinking about how he'll find a nice spot on the beach to teach her to swim, he misses the chance.
Ray seems like he's on this quest out of obligation rather than desire. More worried what people might think than from any real sense of outrage. He claims he's after his car and credit card, not Norma. Well, he doesn't get either, and barely seems fazed by the fact. He does (briefly) retrieve Norma, but she dithers and sways between goals and aspirations as badly as he does, so that doesn't last.
It's appropriate for a story where what seems like the plot (Ray pursuing these two) so often comes to a screeching halt or is almost forgotten in the midst of another sermon from Symes about some author and whether he really died in a hotel in Tulsa or not, or Ray's dreams of beginning an affair with a single mother he meets by finding a nice stretch of beach to teach her to swim. Ray drifts through the adventure, pulled to and fro by the greater personal gravity of literally every person he meets. He gains nothing - no lasting friendships, no revenge upon Dupree - and learns nothing from the experience. He's a putz at the start, and a putz at the end.
'Then he raised his knit shirt and showed me a purple scar on his broad white back where he had been shot by a crazy man in Memphis. One of his lungs had filled up with blood and when he came around in the emergency room of Methodist Hospital he heard a doctor ask a nurse if she had the key to the morgue. A close call for Jack! Not everybody was glad to see him!'
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