Harry Brown
Harry Brown is a slow boil — visceral in its horrors, and gritty in its depiction of the criminal underclass of societal predators preying on victims in Harry Brown’s crumbling neighborhood. Michael Caine’s performance is superb — subtle, believable, and somber. When Harry buys a gun from some needle-sharing, drug-addled pot growers, your flesh crawls every moment he’s in their hovel. When he finally begins to take action against the scum who are destroying the world around him, you cheer him on, even as you worry for him. The similarities to Gran Torino are obvious. Also owing a bit to Dead Man’s Shoes, another UK revenge film, Harry Brown does what that film couldn’t — remain believable from start to finish.
