Harry Brown: A Quick Review

This is a British movie, therefore the entire cast have British accents, sometimes making it difficult to understand what they are saying.  Just a heads up.  The thriller, directed by Daniel Barber, in his first feature length film, was made last year, but got limited release this year.  In the title role is Michael Caine, one of the best actors to come out of England...fact.  And one of my personal favorite actors...opinion.  He was my main reason for wanting to see the movie to begin with and I wasn't disappointed.  Harry Brown is a former marine and widower.  He lives in a violent neighborhood, and doesn't really do much about that.  That all changes when one of his best friends is murdered by gang members, shortly after missing his wife's final moments of life.  He got to the hospital too late because he wanted to avoid going through an underpass that had a lot of violent activity.  Harry then makes the executive decision to become a vigilante for justice against gang violence and such. So naturally along the way, Harry kills various gang members through a variety of means including stabbing and gunshots.  Michael Caine, being who he is, a great actor, and the star of this movie steals every scene that he is in.  He is great as the lead character and shows great range of emotions.  This ranges from love and commitment to his wife, who is in a coma at the start of the movie to anger and the need for justice when it comes to gangs committing terrible acts of violence.  And on a more superficial note, seeing a 76 year old man shooting people is just incredibly entertaining.  The whole old man with a gun thing could remind some people of Clint Eastwood in "Gran Torino." "Harry Brown" was extremely low budget, which worked perfectly fine for the type of movie it was, a thriller with no fancy special effects.  The cinematography was nothing special, and including some tracking shots, zoom outs, or the every popular close-up of Michael Caine's face, full of emotion.  Although sometimes slow in parts (which is perfectly undertstandable giving the storyline), the movie was pretty well paced.  Overall, it was a pretty good movie (not bad for someone's directorial debut), with a great performance by Michael Caine.  If you like him, you may want to check the movie out.  It's worth a dollar to rent and is much better than a lot of what's being released these days.  One more thing to note, the beginning and end credits are so unbelievably small, it is impossible to read. That was incredibly annoying and I did not understand the point.

-Joseph Sbrilli