“Harry Brown”
Reviewed April 2010 by Ted Faraone
3 ½ stars out of Five; $9.00 ticket on a scale of $0 to $12.50.
MICHAEL
It’s not the same as the “Dirty Harry” franchise, but they have a lot in common.
Clint Eastwood’s “Dirty Harry” is a film legend. “Harry Brown,” with Sir Michael Caine in the title role is a tad different. Harry Brown is not a cop. He’s a retired British soldier, a decorated veteran of the “dirty war” in
Harry Brown is a pensioner living in a council flat. He has just buried his comatose wife, and his best friend, Leonard Attwell (David Bradley IV), is railing against gang members who terrorize the locals. Neither of these oldsters should be taking on teenage toughs. Harry warns Leonard against it -- to no avail. Leonard gets himself slaughtered.
Up to now, pic is plausible. It is at this point that Harry, reluctantly, dons the armour of unrighteousness in defense of human decency. Pic then veers toward fantasy.
Leonard’s murder brings D.I. Alice Frampton (Emily Mortimer) and D.S. Terry Hicock (Charlie Creed-Miles) into play, two honest cops, the former having a social conscience. There ensues a sort of game of cat and mouse (without the amusement of the eponymous Claude Lelouche flick) between Detective Inspector Frampton and Harry, who has decided that enough is enough.
Harry launches a one-man crusade to save the council flats. There’s an underpass that is a metaphor for the story. Nobody decent, including Harry, takes it, although it is the shortest way from the council flats to anywhere else in town. It’s gang turf. It’s also where Leonard got himself offed.
Harry puts to use his experience of the “dirty war” and goes after the thugs and their drug dealer and gun runner bosses. Here is where the preposterous rules. Harry scores a stash of guns from a couple of lowlifes, kills them, and then sets fire to their property, while managing to save a drug overdosed girl and, using the lowlifes’ Land Rover as a getaway car, takes her to hospital. At this point, since Harry is nowhere seen wearing gloves, forensics should have nailed him. British soldiers are fingerprinted. That is plot’s weakest point.
He then stumbles on a cell phone video of Leonard’s murder, which he puts to good use.
In “Harry Brown” there are no good guys; only guys who are less bad. Heck, even the local publican is a hood, who shelters his murderous nephew and sets up pic’s climax, in which D.S. Hickock gets killed and D.I. Frampton and Harry are presumed dead -- emphasis on “presumed.”
There is a sort of “Our Man in
The sad thing about “Harry Brown” is that it could be a five star film if it were not for the plot screwups. Caine is at his best. Supporting players shine. The menacing toughs menace utterly. The only other issue, typical of many films today, is the sound recording, which has its subpar moments. Helmer Daniel Barber has firm hand. Editing, cinematography, and set design are all workmanlike. At 102 minutes it moves. It’s Gary Young’s screenplay that leaves auds wanting better. “Harry Brown” got production coin from the British Government. Evidently it was taxpayer money well spent. With an estimated budget of $7.3 Million US Dollars it grossed $173 million in the
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