MOVIE: HARRY BROWN

Harry Brown is not a flash-bang extravaganza of a movie. It won’t pour memorable one-liners into a viewer’s head, nor will it try to depict violence on a steady, concrete base – showing it as undeniably justified. Harry Brown is however heartbreaking in its sincerity, deliciously disturbing in its intensity, and astonishing in its aesthetical approach towards exploring the Vigilante/Revenge trope in cinema. It follows the “last straw” moments in the life of Harry Brown (played by Sir Michael Caine), a pensioner, recent widower and former British Marine who, after losing his only friend in a horrendous gang attack, suddenly sees his home on the Housing Estate as a different place – as a place in need of bloody change. The movie picks apart generation disparities and inequality in the social classes, and tiptoes around the vicious underworld of Britain’s crime culture, in ways that will never stop replaying behind your eyes. One moment touchingly honest, the next skimming reality and diving into an urban warzone with an unflinching gaze – do not miss this film. (AEB)