KineticSeoul
This is a pretty straightforward revenge elements, except for the fact that it deals with a aging ex marine that has nothing much to live for. The concept of how it shows the perspective and grief from old people that gets kicked around and abused by young juvenile delinquents. Usually it's the old middle aged men that does wrong to society. And I do believe in most cases they do inflict pain onto other, except by taking advantage of the system or doing things underhanded through manipulation. Maybe because of mid-life crisis, selfishness, gave up on the world or just because power can corrupt. However even youngsters are capable of committing horrendous crime and inflict suffering onto others just for the heck of it. Michael Caine really brings about a believable performance while portraying a character that feels washed up and doesn't have much to go on. And when a friend gets killed by a group of delinquents or hooligans he is out for revenge. This is not like any of the "Taken" movie where he has all the tools to take down the bad guys. His age catches up to him and you as the audience can see the mistakes he makes because he isn't as agile as he use to be. So I give this movie credit for showing the other side of the coin to be somewhat different from other revenge/crime movies. This one really delves into a man's inner turmoil and how age is insignificant when it comes to having a heart and just about everyone has emotional scars they have to deal with. It isn't a film I would see again, but it's not a bad movie to sit through if it came on TV. What made this film at leas somewhat stand out to me is the gritty and nasty atmosphere that takes place in London.6.5/10
Cheese Hoven
I remember watching films like Dirty Harry and Death Wish in the 1970s and thinking that America must be a seriously messed up place to produce violence like this. England at the time was still a fairly genteel place, although crime was massively on the rise. Sadly, some 40 years on, I wish I could say that this film is a ludicrous over the top version of Modern Britain, but, from my own experience, I don't think it is.Therefore, politically, I think the film is bang on. However, aesthetically it is rather lacking.Only one sequence stands out as a striking cinematic vision. This is when Harry Brown visits a couple of coked up gun dealers. He enters a subterranean world, a little bit of hell on earth and part of the power of this sequence is that the dealers are too drugged up to realise the level of degradation about them. This section is extremely well shot and acted by all concerned.The other parts of this fail to approach this level. Much of the film looks like it could have been made for TV. True, the scenes of the 'youths' being interrogated are energetic and realistically written with four letter words in every sentence, but generally the police scenes are rather dull and empty. The caring female PC and her officious male superior are too cliché ridden (and politically correct) to be effective. The writing of these characters just seems to be going through the motions.The final bloody shoot-out again fails to convict, while the conclusion just has a dangling unfinished feel.
antoniotierno
"Harry Brown," a feature film debut from the director Daniel Barber gets to introduces us to a man at his wits' end, a man who doesn't know what happened to the world he used to know — and very determined to take action, however violent and bloody. And while the movie at times loses credibility (this "vigilante pensioner" seems to have many extra lives) and isn't easy to watch, it haunts the viewer with its details of life under siege. But at the center of this extremely violent revenge drama — almost a Western movie, ending up with a saloon shooting — is something quiet: two delicate, heartfelt performances matching each other, Emily Mortimer and Caine, master of gentle sadness.
Adam Peters
(56%) The first opening half hour works really quite well as we the audience get sucked into Harry's bleak world of pain, fear and anger. But as it goes further and further along it starts to fall apart at the seams before dropping into absurdity at the end. The idea of an older man in some of the more dangerous parts of Britain taking on thugs only works up to a point, and when it becomes a bit too Hollywood, and a bit too like Death wish 3, then everything starts to crumble and fall. If this had stayed on its gritty and somewhat realistic course until the end then this could have really been something unique, instead it's a missed chance of a potential future classic.
AD
