There will almost certainly be SPOILERS in what lies below this warning.
I was expecting to find Harry Brown disappointing. Thematically it seemed a tired rehash of Clint Eastwood's 2008 redemption and revenge piece Gran Torino (my notes for that film I'll load here in due course) or Michael Winner's Neo-Con wet-dream Death Wish. On top of that, the trailers pointed to glaring logical leaps in the plot- most notably that Caine is a trained killer who finds himself petrified with fear in the face of a weasely, seven stone chav with a pen-knife and moments later stands fearless in the face of a gun-wielding hard man.
In truth the story is hackneyed and obvious, it does rely heavily upon a suspension of disbelief, the portrayal is melodramatic and yet it works well overall. The similarities with Gran Torino aren't so great as to spoil your enjoyment and the personality metamorphosis that the script presents us with is nowhere near so unbelievable as it had appeared to be.
What you're left with then is Caine drawing upon his iconic status as Harry Palmer/Charlie Croker etc in an achingly 2009 British film- this won't age well at all such are the lengths that have been gone to in order to make it appear contemporary. That's a good premise and makes for a good film. It's certainly strikingly shot with Director Daniel Barber creating a stylised and yet authentically claustrophobic atmosphere around the protagonist. And there are good performances to help it along- I especially liked Emily Mortimer's I'm-more-than-simply-beautiful performance as a vulnerable but stoic Police Officer swept along by politicking on one hand and the immovable wall of silence on the other. My favourite moment, however, came with the funeral of Caine's friend Len whose murder instigates the chain of events depicted. In a graveyard we see a procession of funeral cars led by a hearse with a large floral tribute reading 'Grandad', this then passes Caine the lone mourner as a disinterested Vicar goes through the burial service. The loneliness and isolation and regret and disillusionment and lack of any real stake in society that is Harry Brown's life (and was his dead friend's) is beautifully summed up there in a single image. Fantastic. Sadly, the same message is ham-fistedly repeated with Harry's solo chess game later but the initial imagery is superb.
That it is a bit of a right winger's fantasy- yup, a British Death Wish- should be something you can leave aside if it bothers you as part of your suspension of disbelief. And in fact it would be if the film ended at the natural conclusion, ambiguously and with the darkness which makes it work so well intact. Unfortunately following the end of the story, a chapter of neat tying up is tagged-on in which everything is bright and happy and clean and sanitised and dumbed down with the clear message that everyone should be thankful to the murderous vigilante for doing what the police couldn't or wouldn't. It's such a fucking shame and ruins the film. Harry Brown presents an uncompromising look at the harsh realities of Britain's underclass with drug-taking, violence, rape, abuse, prostitution, drug-peddling and murder all shown in graphic detail. Hell, even the oblique references to The Troubles and the British Army's presence in Northern Ireland during the 1960s and 1970s are dealt with adroitly. So much good has gone before it.
And then the whole thing is undermined by the out-of-character and unnecessary epilogue which, I suppose, is an attempt to drag the whole thing away from being a borderline fascistic fantasy piece. In treating the audience with disdain and suggesting that this mollycoddling is required, it does quite the opposite. Such a shame. Such a bloody shame.
