Harry Brown: A Review by Alex Chan

Harry Brown: A Review

I watched a movie earlier today called Michael Caine: Street Justice. Not really. It was actually titled Harry Brown, and it was pretty cool. It’s a British “crime-thriller” starring Michael Caine as the titular old man, who decides to fuck up some young gang members after they kill his best friend. The film’s take on today’s youth and gang culture is the typical “they hide in graffiti’d tunnels and smoke stuff out of light bulbs when they’re not harassing/killing people” shtick, and the scenes involving police are the usual “hey Chief, listen to me! There’s a vigilante out there killing people! Chief, please listen to my paranoid suspicions instead of doing real police work” sort of deal. But on the whole, the movie seemed like a less horrible, darker, British take on Gran Torino. Here’s a chart that I wrote up comparing the two films:

Gran Torino Harry Brown
Grizzled, ex-armed forces main character who don’t take no shit from no one Yes Yes
Punk ass kids who need a beating Yes Yes
Horrible Asian actors Every single one Just one girl who (unconvincingly) overdoses
Vigilante justice No Yes
Racism Yes No
Michael Caine No Yes


All in all, Harry Brown is a pretty alright movie. It’s good to see that other love Michael Caine as I do, seeing as how half the shots of Caine are close-ups of his face. The main problem was that he is too loveable a guy to be shooting people. To be fair, it’s not as if he goes on a rampage, shooting chavs willy-nilly. Every time I see a closeup of Caine’s sad, world-weary features in Harry Brown, I see a man who is a fucking badass wishes he could turn back time. A few British reviews criticized the movie for lacking “moral ambiguity,” but they can sod off, the tossers.