Logo

Harry (Michael Caine) is a retired marine with a terminally ill wife and just one friend Len (David Bradley).

Harry's life is monotonous and samey: leaving home, going to the hospital, going to the pub to play a bit of chess and back home. This is not much of a life, as Harry lives in a decimated part of Southern London, eroded to the point of being overrun by drug running and violent behaviour.

Harry's wife dies in her sleep and Len gets murdered in a hellish underpass, all this while the police basically says there's not much they can do.

Trying to drown his sorrow, Harry gets drunk at his local pub, and, while going back home, gets mugged by a junkie, reacting, Harry kills the assailant almost instinctively, after that, he decides to take matters into his own hands and go against the murderers, first, by procuring himself a gun, and here is where the movie turns interesting.

Michael Caine's performance is nothing short of extraordinary, playing Harry Brown as not an unstoppable killing machine performing ridiculous stunts (unlike poor Harrison Ford, for example) but as an experienced man with proper training, quick thinking and cold blood. Sure, it is right-winged, fascist and morally questionable, but Michael Caine puts so much effort into the character that almost becomes a meditation on old age and modern-day impotence.

The fine fellows at Comic Book Resources mentioned Harry Brown is somehow thematically linked to Frank Miller's seminal The Dark Knight Returns, which is true to a certain degree, however, such black and white approach to crime and punishment is a bit off-balance in our current bleak, cynical age, but it is still great entertainment!