2009
M
Contains violence, offensive language, drug use and sex scenes.
Every man has a breaking point
When a crew of drug-dealing gang members takes the life of his only friend, Leonard (David Bradley), retired Marine and widower Harry Brown (Michael Caine) decides to take the law into his own hands -- but his old-school training might be outmatched.
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Reviewer: Aaron Yap
Date Added: 19 Dec 2010
Aaron's Rating:3.0
Not nearly as much fun as it sounds, Daniel Barber’s seriously unpleasant Harry Brown casts Caine as an ex-marine who goes on a revenge-kill-spree when his best friend and chess buddy is brutally murdered by a gang of young thugs. The film is pretty much Death Wish all over again, and it’s at best working as straight-up exploitation, i.e. when we see Caine – bumbling, emphysema-ridden –
taking the law into his own very bloody hands. Of course, it helps that it is Michael Caine dishing out the nasty violence. But Daniel Barber’s clinical, ice-cool direction doesn’t yield much of an emotional punch. One definitely senses that the film thinks it’s more profound that it actually is, whether as a character study or some sort of social commentary on British youth violence. But Barber stages the action with such splattery glee, it’s hard to take it as anything more than a grim, gory genre movie.
