‘Harry Brown’ Isn’t Quite Gran Torino, But You Wouldn’t Want to Mess With Michael Caine Either!

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It’s impossible to view Harry Brown on its own merits if you have already seen its American parallel, Clint Eastwood’s 2008 film Gran Torino. The similarities are obvious – septuagenarian military veterans strike back at the youth violence that has been escalating in their once-peaceful neighborhoods. Both films have been criticized, as most vigilante films are, as ultra-fascist views on how to solve very serious social problems.

But that judgment’s only fair if all you’re looking at are the DVD covers. Michael Caine, turning in yet another excellent performance, is the title character, an aging ex-Marine who, with his comatose wife slowly dying, has only one remaining pleasure in his life: playing chess with his friend Leonard (David Bradley). Leonard lives in fear of the drug-fueled violence of young people in their neighborhood which the police seem to have no control over. In quick succession Brown’s wife passes away and Leonard is murdered trying to protect himself from a youth gang, leaving Brown with, as the cliché goes, nothing to lose. Upon drinking heavily after Leonard’s funeral, Brown’s military training kicks in when he is about to be mugged by a knife-wielding thug. This releases Brown from his inhibitions and sends him down a path of vengeance in search of Leonard’s killers, all while eliminating the key players behind the neighborhood’s violent drug culture.

Seeing Harry Brown as simply the British version of Gran Torino is not only unfair, but is also a disservice to a film that brings a slightly different approach to the well-tread urban vigilante film. For one, Michael Caine’s Brown is a very different vigilante than Eastwood’s Walt Kowalski. Whereas Kowalski was a threatening figure whose outdated views on race made us laugh, Brown’s penchant to dress formally and dourness force us to view him in a more sophisticated, gentlemanly way. Furthermore, Brown is humorless, and unlike Eastwood’s Kowalski we never get the sense that he’s having any fun or enjoying the mission he has set himself out to complete. Because of this, Brown’s less grizzled exterior adds an element of shock to the film, because we simply don’t expect this doddering old man to be so ruthless, even as Brown’s secret military past begins to unfold as the film progresses. Whereas Kowalski threatened, Brown makes good on all his threats – unlike Kowalski, Brown is not initially out to only protect – in fact, with Leonard’s death Brown has nobody left to protect, so he dismisses protection for vengeance.

First time feature director Daniel Barber – his only previous credit being the Oscar-nominated short The Tonto Woman – hits all the right targets with the film’s lighting and music, bringing a typical subdued and dark moody atmosphere to the film. The constant appearance of graffiti and off-key lighting establish how truly decayed Brown’s neighborhood has become. In particular, the rancid house where Brown goes to buy a gun for his crusade – a process, we must remember, far more difficult in the UK than it is in the United States – far outdoes the flats in Trainspotting in its debauchery. This is deliberate – like Brown, we are sickened by what we see. Barber’s direction makes it easy for us to sympathize with Brown, and though Brown rarely passes judgment on the world around him (his true mission remains the hunt of Leonard’s killers), we see this world from his perspective and easily understand his condemnation of it.

The film’s few flaws lie in its fairly typical presentation of the police as clueless as to the source of the escalating violence, with only detective Alice Frampton (Emily Mortimer) recognizing Brown as a lone vigilante bent on revenge. Of course, her theory is entirely dismissed by her partner Sergeant Hicock (Charlie Creed Miles) and superior officer as foolishness. This, along with the film’s climax in which the police department’s disastrous late-night raid on the community leads to anarchic rioting, only adds to the fuel of detractors’ opinions on vigilante films – that they are prone to show the police as ineffective and clueless when it comes to solving social ills in contrast to the success brought on by a lone gunman. Furthermore, while the film’s story holds up well, the final scenes seem intent on forcing a betrayal by a character who is not established enough in the film to betray Brown with remotely any kind of the emotional impact the filmmakers seem to want the betrayal to have, almost as if they felt obligated to include such a betrayal because it’s such a staple of the genre. The scenes still have emotional resonance, just not the overall impact the scenes would have if the character – or just his relationship to Brown – had been better established earlier in the film. It works, but not as well as it could have or should have worked.

Harry Brown is the type of film that is ultimately a strong entry into the vigilante genre, though the typical boundaries of the genre do prevent it from breaking out and becoming a unique experience. It does offer something to those who feel that vigilante films like The Boondock Saints try a little too hard to come off as “cool” at the expense of story – after all, on the surface, what’s cool about a gun-totting old man with a chess fascination? It’s when that “old man” is played by someone with the ability of Michael Caine that we realize that, actually, there’s a lot.

Trailer

Thanks to Chris M for the review

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