Harry Brown

God bless Michael Caine. In other hands it’s easy to see Harry Brown as having been just another revenge flick, with the main twist being it’s an older man who’s meting out the justice (a la Gran Torino), but thanks to Caine, it becomes something far more watchable. He brings an odd believability to his trigger-happy character, where despite the buckets of unpleasant bile he has ready to fling at those he believes are ruining everything, there’s still a genuine sadness and world-weary pathos to the character.

Caine plays the titular Harry, who is having trouble coping with the death of his wife, and snaps when his best friend is senselessly beaten and murdered by teenage thugs. As Harry is an ex-Marine and has decades of military experience under his belt, he knows the authorities aren’t going to do anything worthwhile, so he steps in. With his old army pistol, Harry turns vigilante, bringing law and order to the streets at the end of a gun, setting to work wasting every mugger, drug dealer and lowlife he can find.

Although director Daniel Barber wants it to feel like an urban western, in reality it’s just a relatively simple revenge film. Indeed, coming close on the heels of Gran Torino, the film’s lack of ethical nous does seem rather dispiriting, but thankfully Caine carries it. You may not agree with Harry’s actions, but you can certainly understand them. While the script is deceptively simple, it allows Caine to build up a sense of pent-up frustration and confusion with a world that seems to have collapsed since his youth (when Harry fought to save the country that now seems to be mocking him), so that when the film goes to rather unpleasant revenge extremes in second half, with the old codger turning completely Dirty Harry, you’re still with him.

Caine ensures that what could have been a pretty run-of-the-mill thriller is very  watchable, especially as without him it could have been hard to swallow the fact that the realism of the first half gives way to some pretty brutal scenes of over the top murder and torture. What’s slightly less easy to take is that while Harry is a wonderful character, the film paints good and bad in such broad strokes – the thugs and delinquents are so unremittingly unpleasant and without redeeming features, that they’re barely human – that its take on real-life social problems borders on the fascist. But in that respect, it’s no different to most revenge flicks.

Harry Brown isn’t particularly meaty, clever, intelligent or ground-breaking, but it is oddly entertaining viewing. It’s also pretty uncompromising, and Caine is wonderful. Even at 76 he’s still one of the coolest people on the screen. It’s also great to see him continuing his run of good roles in worthwhile movies. While we lost him to dross in the 1980s and most of the 1990s, he’s come back with a vengeance in the last decade, and is probably on the best form of his career. And long may it continue.

Overall Verdict: It may go over the top and get a little fascist towards the end, but thanks to Caine, Harry Brown is a very watchable movie.

Reviewer: Sam Bruneau