Harry Brown is a retired Marine and a widower who lives alone on a depressed housing estate. His only company is his best friend Leonard. When Leonard is murdered by a gang of thugs, Harry feels compelled to act and is forced to dispense his own brand of justice. As he bids to clean up the run-down estate where he lives, his actions bring him into conflict with the police, led by investigating officer DCI Frampton and Charlie Creed-Miles.

Cinema Release Date: 11 Nov 2009 Run Time: 103 minutes

Starring: Michael Caine, Emily Mortimer, Ben Drew, David Bradley and Jack O’Connell

All we hear in the press is “Broken Britain”. Knife crime this Knife crime that. It has shockingly become part of every one’s lives. More and More teenagers are dying on our streets and fear and intolerance are rife. Our prisons are full to the brim and police are struggle to maintain law and order.

Harry Brown depicts this beautifully. This film grabs its plot from the headlines, using the panic of youths, yobs, hoodies and druggies on a council estates as its center point. Micheal Cain plays our main man Harry Brown, an old aged pensioner living on an estate run by a mob of Hood’s lead by the local big mans son Noel (Ben Drew aka Plan B)

Brown a retired widower passes the time playing chess in the pub with best friend Leonard (David Bradley). The pair discuss the decline of society and the youths running rule over the estate they inhabit. Drug dealing is rife, and they are often too frightened to leave their homes. Leonard tells Harry he cant handle it anymore, He arms himself with a bayonet and says “it’s for protection”.

Shortly after and with no great surprise he’s found dead, brutally stabbed by his own weapon. Brown takes this badly and spends a night getting drunk in the pub under the glaring eyes of a drug dealer. On his walk home He is approuched by the dealer and accidentally kills him. The killer instinct that lay dormant from his time in the Marines returns, and with no help coming from his local police force, he sets about taking down the Hood’s responsible for his friend’s death. Brown becomes the unassuming antihero that’s pushed to action and tasked with cleaning up the dirty town.

Brown is played perfectly by Caine, With a mixture of his “Jack Carter” (Get Carter) character and “Alfred Pennyworth” character (The Dark Knight), Caine who is weathered by age, and a minimal approach to the character makes Brown slightly chilling and turns the film in to a blockbuster.

The film constantly shifts styles going  from the dreariness of Harrys flat, to a tension-filled crime thriller. All sprinkled with a dark humour surrounding the absurdity of the situation. From the comfortable dull browns and greys of Harry’s lonely daily routine, too the cartoon greens of the hidden cannabis forests in the drug den, oh and messed-up characters who use pistol barrels as make-shift crack pipes. Strangely adding all these pieces together, it fits perfectly and showing just how good the production value was.

The one small problem we had with this film though is infact its ending. We are left with something that  effectively sidelines its thought-provoking, discussion-stimulating core, in favour of a crowd-pleasing ending. It is frustrating because Harry Brown is, mostly in parts one of the most original films to come out this year.

Saying this however, Harry Brown’s key problem is its lack of pace. The Director is so busy with his ‘Broken Britain’ agenda that the film moves at a snail’s pace and appears to do so to give the movie the sort of weight he clearly hopes will raise it above a simple “vigilante picture”.

People have so far compared Harry Brown to the likes of “Adulthood” and “Kidulthood”, but they are not a patch on Harry Brown. Brown makes these films look like a Disney flick. Its dark, gritty and thought provoking, We could not recommend this film highly enough, but do  be prepared to come out feeling slightly edgy and disturbed, but also relieved to be going home to your leafy suburbia. Michael Caine is at the top of his game and if he isnt nominated for a Oscar after this we want to know why.