The coding blog of Alastair Smith, a software developer based in Cambridge, UK. Interested in DevOps, Azure, Kubernetes, .NET Core, and VueJS.
[4/5]
Harry Brown was declared by ShortList to be the best British film of 2009. I don’t feel that it can justifiably be given that accolade in the same year that the wonderful An Education played in cinemas. Whilst both films include an impressive cast of British actors; some stand-out performances; have well-shaped, absorbing plots; and are brilliantly directed; An Education is quite simply the better film. But enough with the comparisons.
Michael Caine plays Harry Brown, an ex-serviceman living on a sink estate in Elephant and Castle. Gangs of “feral youths” roam the estate terrorising its inhabitants. The film opens with an initiation ritual involving a gun, apparently filmed on a mobile phone; next we see a young mother murdered as she pushes her toddler through the estate. Other scenes involve sexual harrassment of a young lady whilst her boyfriend is physically initimidated, violent weapons, drugs. The police, whilst mostly well-intentioned, are ineffectual. When they do arrest one or more of the gang members, they are unable to get any information out of them (“No comment” being the stock answer) and are forced to release them again. If this film were a colour, it would be pitch black. It shamelessly plays to the “broken society” fears of Middle England, and with a plot like that you can see why The Daily Mail proclaimed this to be “finally a film that really matters”.
Over the course of the film, Brown suffers two bereavements, and is pushed over the edge into vigilantism. D.I. Frampton (played rather excellently by Emily Mortimer) is the only one who recognises the latest deaths on the estate are the work of Brown, but unsurprisingly is unable to convince her superintendent of this fact and has no evidence to charge him or even arrest him. With an impending operation to clear up the estate, the superintendent only has his eyes on one thing: personal glory. Ultimately, and utterly appallingly, Brown is betrayed by his sole remaining friend.
| [img_assist | nid=122 | title=Harry Brown | desc=Even in his 70s, Michael Caine is still bad-ass | link=none | align=center | width=560 | height=373] |
Caine’s performance is rock-solid, and can be considered to extend his roles from the 60s and 70s (there are parallels to The Italian Job and Get Carter, for example). Emily Mortimer and Charlie Creed-Miles put in strong supporting performances as the CID policeman tasked with policing the estate, such as their roles are. The film really revolves around Caine’s performance; no other character comes anywhere close in terms of screen time or development.
The script is visceral, and the cinematography fits the story: mostly shot at night, Harry Brown is as visually dark as it is metaphorically. Director Daniel Barber’s vision is sound and well-realised, and intensely gripping; Barber especially knows how to work tension in his audience. It can be forceful — as the film reached its climax, I felt myself shrinking into my seat, utterly oppressed — but this is no bad thing, and is effective in a film like this.
However, in assessing the film as a whole, I keep coming back to the plot, and I can’t help but feel that it drags the film down in my estimation. It is relentlessly bleak, and its vision of a dysfunctional, broken society seems over-wraught, almost as if writer Gary Young was using it as an exercise in hyperbole. At the climax, it is so appalling and repugnant that it loses some of its effect; you suddenly find yourself outside the film, looking in. It essentially destroys the last vestige of believability Young and Barber are trying to maintain.
I know I said this about An Education — albeit for differing reasons, and I have since changed my mind — but even a month after seeing this film I am not convinced it will be one that ends up in my DVD collection. That said, Eastern Promises is sat on my shelf, so there may be hope for it yet.