
Comparisons to Clint Eastwood’s turn in
Gran Torino will obviously be leveled at Harry Brown, both films being old-dudes-out-for-justice thrillers, but I think it bears far more similarities to Charles Bronson’s
Death Wish movies than Torino. Eastwood’s project is far more layered and bites off a lot more in terms of subject matter – issues of race, abandonment, and a father-son element between Eastwood’s character and his young neighbor are all dealt with varying degrees of success. Harry Brown, on the other hand, is a much more straight-ahead affair. Michael Caine’s Brown is played with a perfect subtlety and an incendiary rage bubbling just below the surface of his frail exterior, but his morality is never in doubt (nor the immorality of those on whom he turns his wrath). Contrast this with the racial epithet-spewing, callous Eastwood in Torino, who is uniformly unlikeable until pretty much the end of the film and whose character is far more nuanced than Brown’s.
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