Watching Michael Caine’s performance in Daniel Barber‘s Harry Brown – supported by an excellent Emily Mortimer – one would almost overlook the film’s major shortcomings. I’ll get to those later.
Caine plays the title character, a seemingly gentle pensioner living alone in a particularly miserable part of London. His apartment is in what would be called a project in American terms (a “council estate” in the film) which is being run by youths high on drugs and with a low threshold for violence (as is made clear in an opening sequence that is stylistically at odds with the rest of the movie). His wife is in the hospital and the highlight of his day is having a pint and playing a game of chess with his friend Leonard (David Bradley). When Detective Alice Frampton (Mortimer) pays a visit to his apartment to inform him that his friend has been killed by the local thugs, what is left of Harry Brown’s world crumbles. Stumbling home from the pub later that day, he is reacquainted with his combat skills (he served as a marine in Northern Ireland) when one of the local criminals tries to rob him. This incident triggers him to take on the role of neighbourhood vigilante to avenge his friend’s murder.
Production designer Kave Quinn sets a visual style for this movie that makes it abundantly clear that there is no hope. Not for the ones being terrorized, not for good police like Alice Frampton and not even for the hooligans themselves. The film makes no attempt to give us an insight into the causes of this situation. And there lies its major shortcoming. By not being interested in the backgrounds it simply uses this particular social setting as a backdrop for what director Daniel Barber has called an “urban western”. But he cannot get away with it that easily. This environment – although perhaps slightly exaggerated in the film – is very recognizable for many viewers. They may not exactly live in it, they have at least heard of it. So the moral issues of what transpires here need to be addressed. They are not. As Michael Philips puts it: “The film exists for one reason only: to see bloody justice done so that a quiet, good man can walk tall and prevail.”
The film also lacks any type of character exploration, which leaves Caine’s and Mortimer’s strong performances as ultimately superficial. A shame, because Mortimer’s Alice Frampton exudes just the right combination of toughness and compassion and her confrontations with thug boss Noel – played by London hip-hop artist Ben Drew – are some of the strongest scenes in the film. And it goes without saying that Caine “makes not a single interpretive misstep” (Michael Philips). Exploring the background of Alice Frampton’s demeanor or her relationship with Harry Brown as she begins to suspect what he’s up to would have been welcome.
Reviewers have complained that Harry Brown’s transition from peaceful pensioner to ruthless vigilante is “absurdly abrupt” (Kirk Honeycutt) and “doesn’t work dramatically” (Manohla Dargis). Personally, I felt it was refreshing that Barber didn’t feel the need for a hyperbolic scene involving women and children to set in motion the revenge plot or a montage in which we see the protagonist driven to insanity and finally donning a home-made costume. And as such, Caine’s character doesn’t have that much in common with well-known movie vigilantes such as Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry or Charles Bronson’s Paul Kersey. Except perhaps at that one moment where his opponent’s gun misfires and, before taking care of him, Harry Brown lets him know: “You failed to maintain your weapon, son.”
Cheat Cut 