Michael Caine is Harry Brown. If that sentence carries a hint of action-movie menace, it's not entirely misplaced. Caine's Harry is eventually roused to awesome and satisfying vengeance, but this film begins in more troubling, nuanced territory.
Harry Brown lives alone, shut away in one of Britain's bleak public-housing apartment blocks. As his wife lives out her last days in the hospital, Harry restricts his activities to games of chess in the pub with Leonard, his last best friend. All around them swarms chaos. Their housing estate has been taken over by warring gangs that deal drugs and settle scores with impunity. The police, represented here by upright detective Frampton (Emily Mortimer) and her cynical partner Hicock (Charlie Creed-Miles), are reduced to simply informing the victims' families when the latest shooting or knifing occurs – visits that Hicock calls death-o-grams.
It's a dark world, and director Daniel Barber does a wonderful job contrasting Harry's old Britain of pubs and basic decency with the youth-gang savagery he walks through every day on his way home. When Harry suffers a horrible loss to the gangs, he quietly decides to act. It's here that one fact becomes important: Harry Brown served in the Royal Marines, where he spent years battling the IRA in Ulster.
And so the stage is set for a classic showdown. Barber follows up his Academy Award-nominated short film with a striking feature debut, showing remarkable control of tone and pace. This is a slow burn of a film, and has much more on its mind than the simple pleasure of retribution. The depiction of gang structures and gang violence feels more kitchen sink than shoot-'em-up. Barber pays attention to authentic detail in both setting and character – although he still allows for some brilliant, thundering firepower.
Cameron Bailey
Daniel Barber studied graphic design at St. Martin's School of Art in London and is an award-winning commercial director. He is the director of the short film
The Tonto Woman, which was nominated for an Academy Award® in 2007.
Harry Brown (09) is his first feature film.