Jan 23, 2010
Shot with a cellphone camera, the film opens with a gang initiation, where a boy living on a council estate in South London is made to take drugs and hold a pistol. He is later shown joyriding with two others on a motorbike, harassing and shooting dead a mother walking her child, and then fleeing only to be killed by an oncoming truck.
The eponymous Harry Brown (Caine), an elderly former Royal Marine and Northern Ireland veteran, tries his best to be indifferent about his violent neighbourhood. He often pays visits to his hospitalized and comatose wife, but avoids cutting through a noisy public underpass, which is a gathering spot at all hours for a local gang. Otherwise, he spends his days drinking and playing chess with his best friend, Leonard (Bradley), at a pub run by Sid (Cunningham) who takes kickbacks from a pair of black marketeers, Kenny (Gilgun) and Stretch (Harris). Harry is informed in the night that his wife is dying, but in order to reach the hospital before she passes away he must go through the underpass, but he is too scared to do so and arrives too late. After the funeral, Leonard confides that he is being bullied by some youths and shows him an old bayonet he now carries to defend himself, citing that the police would not heed his complaints. Leonard later wakes in his flat to find someone had pushed burning dog faeces through his mail slot.
 |
 |
Recent Comments