From Time Out London Only 2 stars
I ended up feeling a bit sorry for Michael Caine by the time this hateful vigilante flick set in modern-day London came to a close. Did the old boy know what he was getting into? The funny thing is that ‘Harry Brown’, bar a violent prologue, begins fairly soberly, even reflectively, as if the makers were thinking more of ‘All or Nothing’ than ‘Death Wish’. Harry (Caine, below) is a widower who shuffles around a crumbling housing estate with only fellow army vet Leonard (David Bradley) for company. But life changes when Leonard falls prey to the hoodies who linger in the local underpass. When distraught Harry gets short shrift from the police (badly written, and poorly played by Emily Mortimer and Charlie Creed-Miles), he decides to take the law into his own hands and drives this already wobbly wagon straight into hysterical genre territory. By now, all you can do is sigh, laugh and try not to get upset at the stupidity of it all.
Although it takes a while before ‘Harry Brown’ shows its true colours, there’a a vulgar whiff from the off: in the first seconds of this debut from director Daniel Barber (who, technically, shows a fair amount of talent) we watch grainy mobile footage of a kid on a scooter as he confronts a young mum and shoots her dead before he comes a cropper himself on the road. It’s horrible stuff, but there must be a good reason for it, surely?
As it turns out, this scene is a random first glimpse of a warped portrait of our city that’s straight out of the Daily Mail – a place where your granny might get shot, stabbed or battered at every turn. It’s also the first hint of the sick ideology of the film, in which ill-informed pessimism is bolstered by childish ideas of revenge. There’s always a punishment around the corner, not only to avenge bad behaviour but also to give the makers sneaky licence to indulge in violence. As narrative – and moral – maths go, this is a cooking of the books that sidesteps any smart commentary on real life.
My comments:
This review comments on how the film uses imagery that is out of the "Daily Mail" with the use of grannys getting shot, and battered at everyturn. The theory of "Giroux" can be applied here, as it comments on how Daniel barber sides step any commentary on real life-as youths are portrayed poorly through the media by the upper classes.
2. The Guardian
Michael Caine gets his tastiest, nastiest role since Get Carter in this vigilante-revenge thriller set in the badlands of south-east London. His Harry Brown is a widower in his 70s, living in a council flat on a rough estate, on medication for his emphysema.
- Harry Brown
- Production year: 2009
- Country: UK
- Cert (UK): 18
- Runtime: 103 mins
- Directors: Daniel Barber
- Cast: Ben Drew, Charlie Creed-Miles, David Bradley, Emily Mortimer, Iain Glen, Jack O'Connell, Liam Cunningham, Michael Caine, Sean Harris
Daniel Barber's film occupies an interesting position on a certain type of Britfilm continuum with Ken Loach at one end and Nick Love at the other; it starts quite near the former and ends very near the latter. Long, interestingly protracted scenes show Harry getting effortfully out of bed, eating a sad lonely breakfast, and dozing off in the sofa of an evening. But when he discovers the need for violence, things speed up.
For my money, Harry Brown is at its best at its midway point, the Loach/Love cusp – when Harry realises that he can and will do something about the yobs. What a tremendous role for Caine. I can't imagine anyone else carrying it off.
Clearly written by the uper/middle classes this review commends micheal caines performance rather than commenting on the youth. The Acland theory can be applied to this review. It doesnt suggest how youths are represented unfairly and even uses words such as "Yobs" which is a negative word uses to stereotype youths in the media today. The review also reinforces hegemony-because it comments on how caine will "do something about the yobs" whcih connotates them as being lower in social class as if they are a potent problem.
3. Daily Mail
This week's cinema offers two visions of a broken society - Harry Brown, which will attract massive critical contempt, and The White Ribbon, which will win almost unanimous raves.
Harry Brown is, however, the better movie.
It starts out like Gran Torino on a London council estate, with Michael Caine as an ancient ex-marine disgruntled at the parlous state of the neighbourhood.
Uncomfortable viewing: Michael Caine as a disgruntled ex-marine in Harry Brown
The first half-hour is a muted character study, with the quiet humanity of a Ken Loach or Mike Leigh film. It's even politically correct, studiously side-stepping issues of race or immigration.
The reason Harry Brown won't attract the praise routinely accorded to Messrs Loach and Leigh is that it then mutates into a lurid revenge melodrama - an updated version of Death Wish, albeit more sophisticated.
Commercials director Daniel Barber is a big improvement on Michael Winner (who wouldn't be?), and Caine is an infinitely subtler actor than Charles Bronson.
Sean Harris also gives a marvellously sleazy impersonation of a drug-pushing, cannabis-growing, gun-peddling pimp. The scene where Caine comes face to face with him is a mini-classic.
Harry Brown is bound to attract panning reviews from critics who will complain that it is a hysterically overwrought reaction to our broken society - as, indeed, it is.
Most hoodies are not the irredeemable monsters that they are here, and a victimised pensioner would have other avenues to explore before turning to vigilante violence.
But Gary Young's screenplay skilfully captures the feeling of a society that has spiralled out of control, with the police passive onlookers and serial offenders going about their businesses and perverted forms of amusement without fear of comeuppance.
It won't only be embattled pensioners who cheer as Caine turns masterfully medieval on the sneering sociopaths in our midst.
The movie also represents pretty well how many of us now feel about the police. That underused actor Iain Glen is splendidly supercilious as a useless superintendent mouthing platitudes about zero tolerance.
A lot of coppers and ex-coppers are going to enjoy booing him. In most pictures like this, the moral centre would be a policeman.
At first, it seems as if it's going to be Emily Mortimer as a puzzlingly posh Detective Inspector. She's the only person to notice that Caine isn't the kindly pensioner he appears, but a man trained to kill.
But the screenplay bravely makes her look like an ineffectual do-gooder as she tells Caine's character, matronisingly, that his council estate is not Northern Ireland. No, he snarls.
Over there, the bad guys were committing vile acts for a cause. Here, they're just doing them for their own entertainment.
It's a fair point, and one I haven't seen in any other movie - a vision of our council estates as talent contests between desocialised degenerates.
Compared to the art-house and liberal The White Ribbon, Harry Brown adopts a more conservative, braver, more realistic approach, and one that will earn them the undying hatred of all right-minded (in other words, Left-leaning) critics. Not me.
Harry Brown is not a great film, but it is an important one, with messages we ignore at our peril.
Verdict: Revenge thriller that's a guilty pleasure
Rating: 
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/reviews/article-1227316/Harry-Brown-He-OAP-Michael-Caines-able-blow-bl-dy-doors-off.html#ixzz1k1S2CBTq
This review comments on the broken society that is true in Britain today. It comments on the mindless violence that youths take part in senseless violence and "- a vision of our council estates as talent contests between desocialised degenerates." Including "there doing it for there own entertainment" The achland theory can be applied here, he praises micheal caine for what he does and the tone of article also places youths in a deregortetry term.
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