Harry lives on a run-down public housing estate in the feral reaches of London, the community taken over by entrepreneurial drug-dealers who, in true Thatcherite style, know where the money is to be had.
Harry's best friend, another mild-mannered widower, is hounded into a confrontation with a drugs gang which, of course, he loses, thus setting the scene for Harry to rediscover the skills he was taught as a trained killer in the Royal Marines, skills he apparently put to use in Northern Ireland.
Thus the way is cleared for us to see Harry using torture to extract a confession (this film has nothing on reactionary telly series 24), while also saving the drug-addled girl and taking her to hospital.
The Police are portrayed as being either corrupt or incompetent, more interested in bureaucracy than in the reality of policing. Their one honest cop is a female inspector, though the film sets her up to be little more than a useless patsy, another weak female who's got above herself in what is (in the logic of the film) a man's world...
I'm not a huge Caine fan. His very early work (Zulu, Ipcress File, Get Carter -- all rather good fims) used his clinical personality well, and in Harry Brown he takes advantage of those cold, dead eyes to make the sentimental killer-pensioner an emotionally plausible figure.
Caine is another of those loud-mouths who assured us back in 1997 that he would emigrate if a Labour government was elected but, apparently not having the courage of his convictions, he disappointed us all by remaining here.
Or maybe he saw very early on how Labour had in fact become just another neocon party, one which, ironically, pursued a vigorous and utterly ineffective "law'n'order" agenda that created the cess-pools in which his latest, failed film is set.
You can probably tell I didn't much care for Harry Brown -- the pensioner or the film.
No comments:
Post a Comment