Harry Brown: A review

Harry Brown is being lauded as the British answer to Gran Torino. There are certainly similarities, but Harry Brown is quite a different film. While Eastwood’s film was thoughtful and staunchly anti-violence, Harry Brown often veers into the outskirts of high camp, like a cockney Death Wish. Director Daniel Barber hasn’t struck the correct balance between social realism and vigilante thriller, and the film ends up meaning very little.

That isn’t to say that it’s a bad film, not by any stretch of the imagination. Michael Caine is great as the elderly widower who sets out to exact revenge on the hoodlums who murdered his only friend. His early scenes are a tour-de-force of isolation and helplessness. But as the film progresses, things go awry, and when Brown regales a dying drug dealer with a story from his time in the Marines, you almost expect Caine to proclaim, “Not a lot of people know that!”

The filmmakers do manage moments of true relevance. The film opens with camera-phone footage of a group of hoodies as they terrorise the council estate and kill an innocent mother. It’s a shocking opening, and taps into the Daily Mail paranoia that surrounds inner-city areas. Its franticness contrasts with the sombre cinematography of subsequent scenes, and the film’s underlying tension begins to simmer.

Unfortunately, that tension is undermined as the film strays into action-thriller territory, with Brown hunting down each of the thugs involved in the murder of his friend. These thugs are your stereotypical nasty pieces of work, while a drug dealer Brown takes down is nothing more than a pantomime villain. The police don’t fare much better: Emily Mortimer’s research for her Detective Inspector seems to have consisted entirely of watching The Bill.

The film’s treatment of violence is also uneven. There is a certain catharsis in watching Michael Caine giving these chavs what’s coming to them, but (without spoiling anything) when end credits roll, Brown has suffered very few consequences from his actions. Are the filmmakers condoning his actions? This question is sure to raise accusations of “fascist” undertones from some quarters. In Harry Brown’s defence, though, the same could be said about Dirty Harry or the Batman mythos since Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns. Like Harry Brown, these works aren’t championing fascism; they’re merely thematic reactions to modern society.

And as a reaction to modern society, Harry Brown does work. But social commentary Harry Brown isn’t. The reasons for the hoodies’ behaviour (whatever they may be) are never delved into; and the police, while initially shown to be more interested in drug-related arrests than the murder of a pensioner, eventually sort everything out. Harry Brown is definitely worth a look, but with a little more thought it could have been truly remarkable film.

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Do you agree with this review??  Make up your own mind. Harry Brown will be screened here at Light House:

Sun – Mon: 5.45 & 8.20pm
Tue: 5.45 & 8.15pm
Wed: 11am, 5.45 & 8.20pm
Thu: 5.45 & 8.20pm