Movies: Harry Brown * * *
(18, General Release)
Friday November 13 2009
There's a touch of the Harry Palmers about Michael Caine's role in this Daniel Barber film, and his performance as a vengeful hitman in the ultra-brutal 1970s thriller Get Carter inevitably springs to mind as well.
But the film Harry Brown is most likely to be compared with is Clint Eastwood's Gran Torino, because it tells the story of a man in his 70s who takes on the local criminal gang. And while Gran Torino it definitely ain't, this film does have its moments, and most of them come courtesy of the dependably excellent Caine.
He is Harry Brown, a former Royal Marine who lives in a grim London council estate and has just lost his wife to cancer. He's all alone apart from his friend Leonard (David Bradley), with whom he plays chess.
But after Leonard complains to him about how a local gang are persecuting him, the old man is found beaten to death in an underpass. With nothing left to lose, and his friend's killers likely to get off scot free, Harry decides to take the law into his own hands and embarks on a killing spree.
Caine is wonderful as Harry, and those big, sad eyes of his eloquently express the silent rage of the besieged elderly. The film is at its best early on, when he shares a couple of heart-rending scenes with David Bradley.
But when the violence comes, the film spills uneasily into Deathwish territory. And it loses its way in a relentlessly unpleasant storyline that never really addresses the reasons for Harry's switch from pensioner to Dirty Harry.
- Paul Whitington
Irish Independent
