HARRY BROWN (2009) ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢
D: Daniel Barber
Michael Caine, Emily Mortimer, David Bradley,
Liam Cunningham, Charlie Creed-Miles, Iain Glen
Michael Caine plays Harry Brown, a pensioner living alone in a rundown housing project that's not the kind of place you'd want to call home if you were hoping to avoid being mugged. Harry moves slowly now and he's wheezing from emphysema, but he spent some time as a marine in Northern Ireland when he was a lot younger, and when his best friend gets beaten to death by a gang of thugs, he starts to put some of his old military skills back into practice. A lot of critics have compared this (unfavorably) to Clint Eastwood's "Gran Torino", which isn't quite fair to "Harry Brown". This one's a straight-up, no-frills, down-and-dirty vigilante flick in the tradition of "Death Wish" or "The Brave One". The set-up is cut-and-dried, with the population divided into two polarized segments: the decent silent majority, who had better learn how to fight back and defend themselves, and the violent, smack-shooting, lowlife scum who deserve only to be exterminated. As pure, primitive exploitation, it gets the job done, and Caine is brilliant, as usual. Emily Mortimer's in it, too. That's another good thing.
