Harry Brown, set in London and starring Michael Caine, has all the ingredients you’d think would make it a provocative, suspenseful dark art house thriller but it spirals into a trashy revenge flick of youth stereotypes and gratuitous violence…
Harry Brown (Michael Caine) is a tired, lonely pensioner who lives on the fifth floor of a crime-ridden London housing estate. Kath, his wife, is gravely ill but Harry does his best each morning to pick himself up, ignore the chaotic drug use, crime and violence that has engulfed his community and walk across town to visit her at her hospital bed.
The film begins brilliantly as rookie director Daniel Barber shocks the viewer with some of the brutal realities of impoverished life in a crumbling South London project. The grainy opening sequences depicting drug use and murder are undeniably shocking, but seemingly necessary to illustrate Harry’s fear-filled retired life. One could be forgiven for thinking that they were about to witness an emotional, realistic social commentary of British contemporary lower-class life. Michael Caine gives us one of his best performances in a role that demands the intensity of character and weathered personality that only a face like his can maintain.
In fact, Harry Brown has all of the ingredients that you’d think would make it a provocative, suspenseful thriller. The dreary London scenes are flawlessly shot – visually appealing to the urban geographer in me, and Caine’s lonesome, character equally deep and emotional. Yet, somehow from these beautifully sombre, reflective early scenes of fear and isolation, the plot spirals quickly and drastically out of control. It turns out this is a provocative film, although, not in the ways its theatrical trailer might imply.
It is provocative cinema because the youth in Harry Brown are over-the-top and out-of-control in every respect. They are stereotyped; portrayed as emotionless, gun-toting, drug-addicted, pathetic and just plain evil – an image embodied by the skinny, scarred gun-dealer, Stretch (played by Sean Harris). It is as Harry sat on Stretch’s couch in his filthy drug growing, pornography producing, arms dealing residence that the film lost me entirely. Not just me either. A cinema filled with our country’s well-known film reviewers agrees. I know so because they all began to awkwardly laugh each time the screenplay thrust Caine deeper into predictable, brutal and unnecessary situations of cold-blooded revenge. Harry has lost his good friend Len to the unruly kids, and someone has to pay!
Harry Brown treads a fine line between dark art house thriller and trashy revenge flick of youth stereotypes and gratuitous violence. I’m afraid somewhere in the middle it fell headfirst into the latter. Caine is a reason this film is worth watching. Admirable for the depth and real emotion he brings to his ex-marine vigilante character. However, the film is not at the same level as the character of Harry Brown.
It may appeal to people looking for a good old revenge slaying or to be shocked at the ‘state of today’s crazy drug-fuelled youth’. Although it’s filled with potentially great acting talent, I’m afraid Harry Brown will most likely leave you with a sick feeling in the pit of your stomach . You’ll wonder where the film took that critical wrong turn and more importantly, what Michael Caine feels about the finished result and what he got himself into. If you’re an urban buff, or passionate about cities and the built environment like me, then hey, maybe you can take something away from the gritty dishevelled urban setting, which for me, was the other star of the show.
By Alex de Freitas, 11 June, 2010
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