Harry Brown

Cinema Monolith: 7/10
IMDb: 7.2/10
The Arizona Republic: ***½ out of 5

Released in the UK on November 11, 2009 and in the US on April 30, 2010
Rated R
103 minutes

Directed by Daniel Barber

Written by Gary Young

Cast: Michael Caine, Emily Mortimer, Charlie Creed Miles, David Bradley, Ben Drew, Sean Harris, Iain Glen, Jack O’Connell, Liam Cunningham, Joseph Gilgun, Marva Alexander, Liz Daniels

As most of you know, revenge and vengeance films will always rank high on my favorites list, and this angry little number was no exception. Michael Caine does a formidable job as a man tired of the disintegrating morality and crumbling neighborhood around him, who witnesses neighbors being harassed and assaulted by local delinquents on an everyday basis, and grows weary of it all. As the one-sheet poster states, every man has a breaking point…and this man has reached his.

Caine plays Harry Brown, a former Royal Marine now living a peaceful life of retirement in London, going through the daily motions at home and at the local pub, where he shares beers and games of chess with his long-time friend Len. The public housing complex where they reside is being terrorized by a gang of drug-dealing street punks, causing the residents to live in fear, and when Len is beaten and stabbed to death by these degenerates, Harry decides that enough is enough, and soon begins to dish out his own brand of pain management.

I’ve only seen a portion of the nearly two hundred films that Caine has appeared in over the last sixty years, but I’ve loved his work in every single one of them, and his turn here as Brown is worthy of inclusion on that list. It was refreshing to see him in this type of tough-guy role; the last time I can remember him playing a character this brutal was in the crime film Get Carter, back in 1971, and I must say, at age 76, he handled both the physical and intimidation requirements quite well, even though at times his character’s age did get the better of him.

And his moments of retribution were both tension-filled and exhilarating, and a few especially hostile instances—one involving a man in a car, the other a pair of dots from laser sights—were just plain cool. The film had a look and feel that reminded me of several gritty, similarly-themed crime thrillers of the 1970s, but for whatever reason, at times I felt like a lot of what was happening was perhaps a bit exaggerated. Could a band of violent jerks really run rampant like this, vandalizing and burglarizing and tormenting at will, without the intervention of the local police?

I still got a big kick out of it, though, and I’d say it’s definitely worth checking out, especially for Caine’s badass portrayal, and the satisfaction of seeing vigilante justice served in a gratifying way. But along with what I mentioned above, be equally prepared for the film’s depressing tone: London is depicted as dangerous and dreary and disillusioned, and the representation of the bored, drug-addled, violent youth of today made me aggravated enough to seek some vengeance of my own.  (7/10)