Harry Brown (2010)

The title character of the British vigilante tale, Harry Brown, is at once both strikingly similar to the cinematic do-it-yourself crime-stoppers we’ve seen before and entirely foreign. Like Korean War vet Walt Kowalski (Clint Eastwood) in Gran Torino and Boston cop Tom Craven (Mel Gibson) in Edge of Darkness before him, Harry (Michael Caine) has the right training. As a Royal Marine in Her Majesty’s service during the wars of Northern Ireland, he is more than familiar with the guns, tactical maneuvers and bloody violence that will soon take over his elderly existence. But unlike those other fogeys, Harry displays a palpable sadness every time he takes a life.

A good deal of that sadness comes from Harry’s loneliness and awareness of his own mortality. At the start of the film, his hospitalized wife finally succumbs to a long illness. His one child–a daughter–died in her youth. His only anchor to the world is his friend and neighbor, Leonard (character actor David Bradley, Mr. Filch to fans of Harry Potter). But when Len strikes back at the drug-dealing bullies in their London estate (housing projects), Harry finds himself without a chess partner and with plenty of reasons to start piling the bodies high to the heavens.

Screenwriter Gary Young includes random acts of violence to make the killings in Harry Brown seem like more than just a giddy revenge spree. These include a particularly gruesome drive-by shooting in the opening scene and a brutal videotaped rape of a drug-addicted girl. But Young’s characters are archetypes rather than real people. Harry is a quiet old man pushed to the brink. The police (Emily Mortimer and Charlie Creed-Miles) are ineffectual bureaucrats. The kids are pure evil with little socio-economic explanation of how they got to be that way. The best explanation we get for gang leader Noel (Ben Drew) is that he is a “cunt, like his father was a cunt” before him.

Still, first-time feature director Daniel Barber’s version of this Old Guy Gone Wild story is significantly darker than others before it. Shot entirely in digital, Barber’s London looks like twilight even in the middle of the afternoon (which time Harry usually spends peaking out from behind his curtains). At night, the streets are lit in a sickly green, and the interiors flash with red light from some phantom neon sign beyond. It lends a texture and seriousness to the fairly thin script.

Speaking of digital, the film’s portrayal of how our digital world has screwed up our morality is an interesting one. A high-definition television in a run-down drug den on which Harry is forced to watch the rape is one of his most viciously dispatched victims. And when Harry finds out that Len’s murder has been captured play-by-play on an iPhone, the poor, old-school gent has to humbly ask one of the chavs to make it work.

It is in scenes like this one where Sir Michael’s real ability as an actor shines through. Of course, it’s hard to watch him act as judge, jury and executioner without thinking of him in his prime as the vengeful Newcastle gangster in Get Carter. Here, he looks every minute of his 77 years and seems as confused to be involved in the vigilante business as he is comfortable executing it. His portrayal is so raw, vulnerable, and compelling that when he breaks down in a crying jag, it’s hard not to cry along with him. Not just for the loss of his friend, but for the loss of his world.

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