Tom Martin
Harry Brown opens with its most important merit: ‘Michael Caine is Harry Brown’ – and thank Christ for that. Caine is well, if not vitally, cast as the film’s lead, and his performance is everything to be expected of the veteran. Less importantly, Harry Brown is an old man without anyone left but an estate’s worth of gangs who kill geriatrics and film it on their mobile phones. He plans to get even whilst the local police launch a raid on the estate.
Newcomer Daniel Barber’s direction is praiseworthy, but the grit he applies is misleading; the film is far too predictable. Despite a number of very decent acting spots from Caine and the younger cast in this film, Emily Mortimer is terribly out of place as some sort of champion for the elderly, leading an investigation that threatens justice to the killers of Harry’s last friend, but generally ready to break like a twig. It doesn’t help that the last role I saw her in was 30 Rock’s Phoebe with ‘hollow bones’… Her character should be played by a tougher, more physically dominating woman, the kind a film-maker isn’t afraid to kill.
Instead, no one dies in this film who the audience has any time to truly connect with or care for; the rest, unbelievably, are spared. The British youth are portrayed as animals, the riots echoing scenes from zombie-horror films (hell, Harry and co even hide from the chaos in an empty pub), and the good guys are too ambiguous and eventually too powerless to root for. The film remains worth seeing for its action, Caine’s electric performance, and its reflections on today’s ongoing British youth issues, but the idea of art imitating life is pretty preposterous here.