Harry Brown, new Michael Caine movie.

Saw this movie last night and was very pleasantly surprised by it. I expected a modern day version of Get Carter but instead was treated to a a very dark, brooding view of modern Britain' inner city estates which made Gran Torino seem positively uplifting. Yes it was perhaps a little cliched with it's stereotypical chav types causing trouble but was worth a trip to flicks just for another great performance from Sir Michael Caine 8/10
 
It was supposed to be Elephant & Castle, and the main estate scenes were shot there.

There is no subway under a dual-carriageway in the area - and those scenes look like they may have been shot in Dagenham.
 
I'm getting tired of middle-class media student presentation of "gritty Britain". Fishtank was exactly the same as this in being both over the top and lacking in realism.

I felt Gran Torino was a much, much better take on the revenge rampage scenario, and that GT dealt with the futility of a violent solution better than HB.

And a key part of the unrealism of HB was the portrayal of the Police. It's as if CCTV and Forensic crime-scene exams had never been invented.
 
Good movie-- The yobs are a little bit far fetched,but close enough to real life to be credible.
I find the thought of a local council being "delighted" that the film was shot in their town to be quite ironic as its a hellhole estate.
 
Emotive first 30mins. Familiar scenario. Caine is good. The hoodlums played their parts well. Campy, predictable and extremely farfetched in places. Too much gratuitous violence/drug abuse scenes (Did we really need to see the junkies constantly shooting up? We got the picture!). The police officers were totally unconvincing, too. In fact, the whole police subplot felt a bit tacked on. Weak ending.

Watchable.
 
Very good film I thought! Just goes to show just how awful the streets of Britain are these days.

Caine was great. The whole chavvy gangster thing did remind me a bit of recent moves, 'Looking For Eric' and 'The Firm' for some reason.

Someone mentioned that there was a shocking start? Did I miss something as I must have missed the first 5-10 minutes as I was late getting out of work. What I saw began with Harry and his mate talking in the pub. (Stick what happened as a spoiler if it was something good) :)
 
loved this film. for me is one of my films of the year. i prefered it to Gran Torino as Ifelt that HB was more realistic (although I did enjoy GT).

would recommend this film to others - 8/10
 
First few minutes of the film...DO NOT read if you don't want to know what happens:

From what I can remember it started with a video as though filmed on a phone of 2 youths riding around on a motorbike. They start to harass a woman pushing a pushchair in a park and pull a gun. They start shooting random shots and one of the shots hit her, and it shows her lying on the floor with a lot of blood around her. The youths then speed off and get hit by a truck. The phone falls to the ground and we see the youths lying on the floor, again with a lot of blood.

Then shows Harry waking up and getting ready to go and meet his friend. He walks towarRAB the underpass but then carries on passed it, as the youths are hanging around it.

Think thats it.
 
Have just watched this film and have to say it was brilliant.

For those that say that the yobs depicted are far fetched, au contrere - try living in the estate in my town where the police dont even go because they are scared of what might happen to them.
The scum on our streets these days makes Britain a much less safe to live than it was.

Caine was superb in this film and if there was any justice he's get an oscar for this.
 
I agree with all of that - even, yes, watchable, but as entertainment not documentary.

I still think that the Police characters and plot were very poor indeed.

When:

The lead hoodie was shouting down the Police in the interview room
There's simply no way that would be tolerated. He'd be:
Back in the cells until he was ready to be interviewed quietly and with respect
 
I thought it was horrific from start to finish. I'm sick to death of films portraying the UK like this. Yes parts of it are bad, but jeez!!! Can we never have a happy medium??? It's all either like this or everyone is frightfully posh such as in Notting Hill.

If I have to see one more unrelentingly for the sake of it awful film about football or so called UK living, I'll scream.
 
Watched Harry Brown today. Great film, very gritty but relentlessly grim.

Plot probably went a bit too far in trying to set Caine up for some sort of modern Get Carter remake. But he's so damn good in it, I didn't really care about the film's unoriginal story or graphic violence.

The man's a legend.
 
Well...as I started the thread in the first place...

Saw it last week.

I thought it started off quite well...it is very well made, but it goes completely over the top in it's cliched and sensationalist portrayal of life on council estates.

I know they are no picnics, I have lived on some of them, but the sort of incidents portrayed here are in real life more isolated and infrequent...but of course to make an entertaining 90 minute movie, it serves the filmaker to make the average council estate resemble Dante's Inferno.

Caine is...well, Caine. He simply trades on his persona. It's the sort of performance he does in his sleep, and we have seen him do it many times before.

In the beginning, the film looks like it is attempting to deal with serious issues, such as isolation, loneliness, loss of loved ones. But it quickly becomes apparent that it is folllowing the Death Wish template - Elderly man loses loved one/close friend, is not happy with the police reactions, takes matters into his own hanRAB, conveniently gets his hanRAB on weapons, and suddenly goes from a geriactric loner to a one-man killing machine.

It does have one very good scene, the one where Caine goes to the crack house. That one seemed to exude a powerful sense of menace and dread , similar to the one in True Romance where Christian Slater goes to Gary Oldman's drug den...but even then, I got the impression that was a deliberate 'homage' to that scene.

Sad to say, the initial impression I got from the trailer has indeed been borne out.
 
Back
Top