Harry Brown

2010-6_16 Harry Brown
The night before I saw “Harry Brown,” a 2009 film starring Sir Michael Caine, which finally made it to Tucson, I saw”To Paris with love,” with John Travolta, as bald as a billiard ball, and Jonathan Rhys Myers in a silly action film that was strictly a comic book fantasy, as the two of them shoot their way through hordes of bad guys, terrorists, naturally—who else? Both films have plenty of horrendous violence, but presented much differently. In “Too Paris with Love” it’s all fun and video games, a lark, an action romp not to be taken seriously. Travolta is Charlie Wax, a loudmouth and uncouth Super-Operative with the CIA who is a specialist at killing the enemy while James Reece (Myers) is a low-level diplomat who dreams of being tough and smart like Wax, but who is hoodwinked by a pretty terrorist until he proves his manhood by shooting her in the forehead before she could complete her mission as a suicide bomber. We don’t believe any of this malarkey for one second; it’s all movie-making to satisfy the American appetite for action films—period. “Harry Brown,” on the other hand, is a dark, brooding film with a social conscience and a deeper aesthetic sense. It is a serious film with some good acting, especially from the old pro, Caine, and Sean Harris, who is scary as a drug-addled addict named Stretch. It is a walk through Hell with blinders off. Everything about the film is noir-like, dismal, enveloped by a nightmare and dripping with nihilism. I left the theater impressed by the craft of the film, but also feeling put upon by a spinning insane and violent world
Harry Brown is a pensioner living in a poor working class London neighborhood. Young thugs rule the projects. The film opens with a kid high on meth shooting a mother walking her baby in a stroller. The scene is shot with a hand-held camera, chaotically jumping all over the place, an expression of the nature of the projects. In the first part of the film Harry loses both his wife and his best bud, Len (David Bradley) who he had played chess with everyday in a Pub. His wife dies of natural causes but Len is murdered by the thugs who rule a tunnel near where Harry lives. Len is killed for no good reason; he’s just a stupid old man to the rowdies; who cares about him? Harry cares; indeed, something in him snaps over Len’s brutal death in the tunnel. This quiet and gentle old man, who has always tried to mind his own business, turns into this avenging and determined mad-dog killer. He is an ex-marine so he is no stranger to violence and death, although that part of his life was long ago. He becomes a vigilante who can kill with no remorse and who gives no quarter to his quarry. He kills five of the youths. The most memorable shooting takes place in the house that Stretch and an associate live in. He goes there to buy a gun from the psychotic Stretch. When he is given a clip for the hand gun and loads the Glock, he quickly dispatching the two dealers. They were not expecting such balls in a pensioner. He also rescued a young woman drugged and obviously in trouble, taking her to a hospital, thus saving her life.
Naturally, I, like other reviewers, thought of the “Dirty Harry” films and Charles Bronson of “Death Wish” fame. But I thought of another film that deserves mention, especially when Harry remarks the hooligans don’t have a cause, like the IRA, but are into violence as entertainment, as an evening’s pastime, an attitude first articulated in a major movie by Stanley Kubrick in “Clockwork Orange.” In that film young people would go out at night to find someone to beat up or kill. It was done as if they have nothing better to do at night. Harry manages to survive his battle with the hooligans and one could even say the film ends on a positive note, as the tunnel the gang had dominated and controlled is now open and available to everyone in the neighborhood as a short cut to destinations on the other side. It’s not much but it’s something.