Harry Brown

Movies like this seldom get a fair analysis. They either rub the viewer's social-political convictions the wrong way, in which case he attacks the film for the wrong reasons, or they rub the viewer's convictions the right way, in which case he applauds it for reasons which are equally specious and have nothing to do with the movie's objective quality. In this review I endeavour to avoid the trap and review it as a film and not some kind of backfisted political polemic.Michael Caine is the eponymous Harry Brown, a lonely pensioner living in a run down housing project ("estate") in one of South London's nameless, crime-ridden semi-slums. The opening sequences, shot almost without dialog, reveal the bare emptiness of Harry's life. He wakes up and reaches for his wife, who isn't there. He eats breakfast alone listening to the (bad) news on the radio. He visits his comotose wife at the hospital, taking the long route because he wants to avoid the local street gang. He then goes to a pub and has a pint with his only friend, Len Attwell (David Bradley) at a pub rub by taciturn publican Sid Rourke (Liam Cunningham) and plays some chess. Then he goes home and sips whiskey in his empty flat. Harry's daughter passed away when she was thirteen, and he contemplates the last act of his life in a kind of dignified but morose quietude. He just wants to be left alone to his routines, but Fate has other plans. Len, who is being tormented by the local pack of thugs, wants some vengeance and tries to enlist Harry, who tells him to go to the police. Disgusted, Len goes off and before we know it, the police are knocking on Harry's door to tell him Len has been brutally murdered. Harry buries his friend, yells at the seemingly impotent police (represented in this film by three actors: Emily Mortimor as a dogged do-gooding sergeant, Charley Creed-Miles as a cynical, street-smart detective, and Iain Glenn as their smooth careerist boss)and proceeds to get very drunk at the pub. Incautiously flashing his cash, he is trailed down to the canal by one of the pack, who tries to rob him at knife point, only to discover that Harry may be old, but he hasn't forgotten the survival skills the Royal Marines drummed into his head. Exit one thug from this vale of tears, and enter Harry Brown, improbable vigilante. Applying the lessons he learned during the Irish Troubles, as well as the fact the punks don't suspect an old man capable of doing more than wetting his Depends, Harry employs surveillance, deception, kidnapping, and torture to obtain the weapons he needs to further his revenge plans and to find out just precisely what happened to his friend the night he was killed, and then gets busy killing those responsible. This pits him against his principal target, a vicious young psychopath named Noel Winters (Ben Drew), who runs the gang, and also serves a sub-lieutenant for much larger ring of heroin dealers, and also the police, who begin to suspect the old man may be more dangerous than he looks.If this sounds a lot like "Death Wish," and all the other vigilante-vengeance films you've ever seen since, hold your horses, son, because "Harry Brown" is playing an old game with some fairly strong cards, including one or two you probably haven't seen before. Let me deal the deck:First, there's Michael Caine. In his incredibly long and fertile career he has turned in some amazing performances, but it's arguable that he has never been much better than he is here, as the lonely, anguished Harry Brown. Caine, who grew up in the same kind of poverty depicted here, and in almost the same neighborhood, brings a terrible pathos to his character. Indeed, he himself noted that what differentiates Harry Brown from other vigilantes is that Harry is a victim rather than offender. He has done everything society and decency have told him to do -- serve his country, get married, have a child, obey the law, be "respectable" -- and his reward is to live a life of loneliness and fear in a crumbling ghetto where you can't even walk a straight line for fear of being mugged or just beaten to death for the hell of it. To get justice for his dead friend requires unchaining a beast inside of him he has had leashed for decades. He doesn't want to do it. He feels he has to.Second, the movie does not make the mistake of depicting Caine as unrealistically tough, savvy, or cold-blooded. He kills his first victim out of instinct, not intention, and on several occasions his age cause him to fail, or at least blunder, at critical moments. Indeed, the movie's most memorable (and now infamous) line -- "You failed to mainatin your weapon, son!" -- delivered right before he blows a drug dealer's brains out, is actually a grandfatherly criticism of the dealer's sloppiness with a pistol, which is the only thing that saved Brown's life in the confrontation. Yet even as he murders the man, he feels it necessary to explain why. This is not something Paul Kersey of "Death Wish" would have done. Harry is a vigilante, but he he's a vigilante who wants to retain his sense of decency.Third, the film is shot at a much higher standard than most. Daniel Barber (director) and Martin Ruhe (director of photography) do a marvelous job of depicting both the ugly, menacing squalor of the Estate -- with its graffiti, broken windows and sinister shadows -- and the neat, clean, homey little flat in which Harry Brown lives, which seems to represent the decency he is in a sense fighting for. The movie is almost Noirish in its use of darkness and decay (both architectural and human) to set a mood and create an atmosphere, and the loathsome character of Stretch (Sean Harris), with his emaciated body, knife scars and needle tracks, is a kind of walking proof of this. Harry isn't just fighting bad guys, he is fighting the decay they bring with them.Now, there are a few moments when the movie overplays its hand by hammering away at the idea that the police are utterly helpless to protect anyone or even bring justice to those who have been attacked. The riots that take place late in the film are shot specifically to show that the thugs are in control and the police merely spectators -- the shot of Iain Glenn driving calmly and contendently away from the riot because he has made his show of force and token arrests sums up the attitude of the entire film, and it is a somewhat simplistic attitude, even if the surface realities ring true. This brings me back to my opening comments. Vigilante movies are seen by the left as "Fascist" because they express a barely-concealed desire harbored by millions of people to chuck due process down the nearest sewer and just blast every violent criminal out of his boots. They point out that social problems are the chief cause of criminality, especially the sort of mindless violence depicted frequently and graphically in this film, and it makes no sense to attack the problem with more violence when you could address its causes by fighting things like poverty and unemployment. Right-wingers, on the other hand, tend to revel in these films because they feel justifiably frustrated by a "system" that seems to coddle vicious criminals while ignoring the rights of decent, law-abiding people: a few well-placed bullets, these folks argue, would do more than all the rehab programs, parole boards, and probation sentences in the world put together. The truth is that both attitudes are understandable and both attitudes contain their own contradictions. A free society can't simply execute its criminals the way you'd shoot grouse and remain free; but it's also true that "freedom" has little meaning if the streets outside your flat are run by criminals who think they can rob, rape and murder with impunity. If "Harry Brown" fails at anything, it is probably in overestimating the power of a pistol to solve deep-rooted societal problems. But, and I want to stress this, Harry himself isn't trying to solve deep-rooted societal problems. He wants justice. He wants revenge. And he wants to be able to walk through that damned underpass without being hassled. A gun is the most effective way to achieve these goals, and so that's what he uses. As the saying goes, capital punishment may not deter crime, but it sure as hell will deter the guy who gets hanged."Harry Brown" is a obviously a dark and brutal film, and not always easy to watch. It holds a lantern to a very dark and slimy corner of human existence, one where viciousness is commonplace and hope and human decency seems to be in very short supply, and the solutions it offers themselves appeal to the daker impulses of human nature. But you can't have light without shadow, and shadows are just as much a part of life. Just ask Harry.

So nice to see a great actor like Mr. Caine not relegated to stupid roles like Alfred in Batman movies.His character in this film is calm, composed, serious, and has a good back story that makes him relatable, and Michael pulled off the role perfectly.Sean Harris did a stellar job as well.Generally the UK tries to hide its violence and issues, and the US gets the most attention for its NYC and LA ghettos. But the UK is only 8 spots lower in crime rate than the US. So it was fascinating to see the disgusting leaches on the 'estate' in this film. They are the dead weight of society, and it was interesting to see how sick and tired the older people were of the harassment that was unpunished by the police even in a society that is very punitive. Of course it's not a documentary, but I imagine there's a lot of truth in it.I doubt Hollywood could make this kind of movie these days. They seem to be obsessed with insipid movies like Avengers, instead of something that makes you think.Great film. Yes there's lots of violence, tons of drug use, and there is even what appears to be a rape occurring with partial nudity. So please keep that in mind. This movie has all of the worst things shown because it focuses on some of the worst people. As we become more tolerant of true crime, we are only hurting our future.

Michael Caine as Harry Brown is wonderful as a weary retired man surrounded by violent thugs who practice crime for "entertainment", as he says. It's very dark, partly a character study, and very slow. My only caveat is that it's a bit slow to get going, though the pace picks up in the last third or so. Tons of thuggish foul language and not a lot of other dialog. Certainly not, not ever, for children and not for the thin skinned. I highly recommend it for those who like its type.

The thing with Michael Caine is that I really like the guy, but there's very few of his movies that I consider above average. This is certainly one of them. I had my misgivings at first because it starts off very slow, but boy does it escalate fast. It's very realistically done too, in that Caine plays an old man, who used to be a soldier back in the day, but he's very out of practice. He makes a lot of mistakes, and barely avoids death. He may have a particular set of skills, but Liam Neeson he ain't. It's a very gritty and tense film, with extreme violence and some horrible drug-taking thugs who are realistically portrayed and not just one-dimensional villains - enough to question whether some of them really deserve their fate. Caine puts in a marvelous performance, much better than his usual standard. You probably think you've seen this kind of film before, and you probably have, but this is far above average. Just don't expect cheerful chirpy cockney Caine - this film is dark.

M.C. at his craft without equal. 100% absolute perfection

Actually, Michael Caine provided a yeoman's contribution to the story. Emily Mortimer and Charlie Creed Miles performed adequately (I believe that directing and scripting hobbled their parts in the overall and specific incidents in the story-line). The biggest disappointment to this narrow-minded viewer is the associating of the portrayed gang violence to the "troubles".

Michael Caine is too good for this vanilla extract of a revenge drama. B-movie i've-had-it-and-im-not-going-to-take-it-anymore schlok

One of our most venerated actors has, throughout his career, often veered between stunning 'bullseyes' and 'missed the mark by miles', leaving a legacy laced with scintillating performances as well as complete stinkers!Somewhat evocative in flavour of Caine's portrayal of Newcastle-born London gangster Jack Carter in "Get Carter", his characterisation of aged veteran (as it turns out!) Royal Marine Harry Brown somehow defies disbelief on the part of the viewer and I found myself enjoying the quite hesitant (on Caine's part) re-discovering of his old youthful resolve as his sense of justice becomes more and more outraged by the events he's witnessing around him. He's no Superman of any sort and age is most definitely against him in this grim and often depressing tale but somehow I found no problem buying into the return of his former training, his wiles, guile and previous 'psychological' knowledge of human nature at its worst when bringing these dredged-up former talents of his earlier life and putting them to effective use in a modern urban context.I honestly can't decide whether it's the persona of the character Harry Brown, as scripted by the film's screenwriter, that I buy into or if it's simply that when Michael Caine really puts his mind to it, he can flesh out almost any half-credible character and endow that character with real believable 'gravitas'.That aside, it IS a tough film to watch with none of those humorous touches and witty dialogue found in Get Carter, for example, and the tone is unrelentingly grim throughout, along with the grey, depressing scenery. God, what a place to end up in spending your remaining years as an OAP! Tough film, yes, but one I know I'll re-visit in future due to compelling performances from the actors (and not just Michael Caine), the scriptwriter and the director. I suppose what I'm saying is that I found that this film really WORKS!

If you like Michael Caine films, this is a MUST HAVE! Brilliant, from start to finish! Thank you.

The character played by Michael Caine is not a super hero with super powers who can eliminate 10 villains in 10seconds. He is a vulnerable old man who happens to have some skills from his past life. The film has some depth and enough action and violence to entertain the audience who wants an action film.

This is an excellent movie. Michael Caine plays the part of a retired pensioner living in a run down housing project. There are drug dealers and various other gangsters and you know that there will be a confrontation. I have watched this movie half a dozen times and it never gets old.

Caine ages well and is excellent in this movie 'à la Death Wish, Brit style'.He incarnates a villain, not w/o reminiscing of his role in 'A Shock to the System' but much more sympathetic in this one.Keeps the viewer on his/her toes till the end!