Harry Brown: gore central

When you attend a showing of an action/revenge thriller that contains lots of blood and gore, it’s usually a bad sign when the man behind draws your focus to his popcorn chomping and heavy breathing, rather than the actual movie. If guns and murder cannot drown out the crunch of movies’ ideal meal, then we have a huge problem on our hands. In Michael Caine’s latest drama Harry Brown, Caine plays an ex-marine who lives in the slums of London. His life is cold, raw and depressing, and the area where he resides is becoming very unsafe. Drug lords and gangs are taking over the housing projects where he lives and commit numerous murders on a daily basis to innocent civilians. Upon his wife dying of illness in a hospital, he lives his life in solitude, except when he plays chess with his best friend Sid. Sid, however, has been a bit disheveled and upset due to these young punks interfering with his daily life. For example, in one scene the audience observes him putting out a fire, which they lit on his doorstep. Harry Brown does not make its full turning point until these murderous gang members execute Sid. After Brown realizes that the police (Emily Mortimer) are not only useless, but cannot discover necessary evidence to jail these criminals, Brown taps into his past as a “killing marine” and to take matters into his own hands.

The movie is easily traceable for every step is not only predictable, but overtly gory. It’s intensity of death and suffrage adds nothing to the plot and if anything, it reveals too much pointless detail. As Harry Brown commits these murders, to seek justice for Sid’s death, Mortimer’s character, Alice Frampton figures out his “vigilante style” and investigates him, despite her discrepancies she faces at work. In the end Brown detonates his enemies and saves Frampton, with a secret twist that I will not give away, although the twist did nothing to heighten this unsurprising plot.

Although my summary was a bit harsh, Harry Brown was not a terrible movie. I think if the direction of the film somehow made it less violent, it could have added a softer element to the plot. As a woman, I love gore an action, more so than the average female, however, for some reason this movie made my stomach flip. It was unfortunate, for it took away from Caine’s performance. His ability to tap into this role was terrific and he lingered in character the entire duration of the film. What I loved about his performance was that he did not reveal what his character was capable of too slowly or too fast. When he did unveil his threshold for violence and killing however, he exposed it in a conventional manner. Mortimer lent a humane and sympathetic character trait to her role, and the audience could instantly tell that she felt too sorry for Brown to turn him into the law. She was always on his side.

Harry Brown contained great acting and a descent script; however, the abundant amount of violence took away the thrill of the revenge. The story contained original elements, however, felt similar to other retribution films we have viewed in the past. The saying less is more could have been applied to the overall narrative, a technique that Caine employed in his portrayal of, Harry Brown.