HARRY BROWN
Director: Daniel Barber Cast: Michael Caine, Emily Mortimer, Charlie Creed-Miles, David Bradley, Iain Glen, Ben Drew MPAA
Rating: Running Time: 1:43 Release Date: 4/30/10 |
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Review by Mark Dujsik | April 29, 2010 As
an actor, Michael Caine has that rare quality of exuding definitive, rational
thought in his performances. His
mind is working, his characters constantly evaluating their current state and
next move. This is true as the
titular character of Harry Brown, and it's a performance that lends credence to a movie
that desperately needs it. After
a harrowing prologue that acts as a firsthand document of a neighborhood gang's
total dismissal of the value of life for the thrill of the kill, Harry
Brown begins with long takes of Caine as Brown going through the motions. He wakes up, makes his breakfast, goes for a walk, visits his comatose
wife in the hospital, stops at a bar, plays chess with an old friend, comes
home, sleeps, and wakes up to do the whole thing over again. The
isolation, the loneliness, the feeling of powerlessness are crystalline in
Caine's performance—the routine motions, quiet demeanor, and blank stares. Here is a man at the end of his life, and he knows it and is reminded of
it each and every waking day. Director
Daniel Barber takes time with these moments, allowing Caine to go through the
motions. The tension here is light. Harry circumvents a pedestrian tunnel that would shorten his walk to the
hospital because the local gang hangs out there. His best and only friend Leonard (David Bradley) starts asking about
Harry's past in the Marines, a time Harry chose to let go after marrying, and
states that he's had enough of the hoodlums in the neighborhood, who harass him
without end. It's
a quiet pressure that builds, until a phone call late at night sends Harry
rushing to the hospital where, in a simple but painful shot, he is met by an
empty hospital bed. Leonard arms
himself with a bayonet, and the next day, two detectives, Frampton (Emily
Mortimer) and Hicock (Charlie Creed-Miles), arrive at Harry's door with more bad
news. Leonard is dead, killed in
that same pedestrian walkway Harry has avoided. Screenwriter
Gary Young makes the inexorable turn from slice-of-life despair to revenge
thriller on a dime. The last moment
of Harry as a lonesome old man comes as he removes an old box from under his
bed, a gift from his daughter, who died when she was young, lay on top of the
remnants of his old life as a Marine. The
visual makes its point, and Harry is now a killing machine. These
sequences work as well as they possibly can. Harry turns a mugger's knife on the
owner. He infiltrates an urban marijuana farm looking for a gun where a young
woman lies on the couch, drugged, while a homemade rape video plays in the
background. Barber captures the
grimy, desolated atmosphere of a London tenement, while Young develops Harry's
targets amoral scum at every turn. Going
down this road, Young has written into a dead end. After spending as much time observing Harry's day-to-day life as the
script does, the only route left is to transform him into society's avenging
angel. Admirably, Caine passes on
the anger and bitterness typical with that persona, and in its stead, he makes
the irrational role of self-appointed righter of wrongs one of reasonable intent.
In the pot farm scene,
Caine's mental process is clear, moving from the woman in trouble to the men who
are the partially the cause to the best course of action to save her and kill
them. The
actual scenes of seeking revenge fall squarely into custom. He interrogates one thug with pain-inducing tactics, participates in a
standoff in the walkway, and generally shoots first and asks questions later. The
cops are incompetent, which is part of Harry's motivation. Young's attention to their failed tactics adds nothing to the sense of a
hopeless situation and feels like manipulation of events to achieve the movie's
theme of individual justice. The
higher-ups ignore Frampton's suspicion of Harry as a suspect in the string of
murders, instead starting a raid in the apartment complex, which leads to a
massive riot, where the main characters are suspiciously able to maneuver freely.
Frampton in particular is a
derivative character. Her partner
hints that she may have a reason for choosing gang enforcement, and her
emotional reaction to telling Harry about Leonard's death confirms that. Young reveals nothing, leaving her character an inconsistent mystery. Copyright © 2010 by Mark Dujsik. All rights reserved. |
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(for
strong violence and language throughout, drug use and sexual content)
