Harry Brown

Michael Caine is Harry Brown - ex Marine who sees one too many of his friends and neighbours terrorised by local youths and hoodies, an ineffective police force and criminality on every street corner; so he decides to take justice to the streets.

This is a really strange but interesting film that is split into two distinct parts. In the first part we have a somewhat artsy film in which a picture is painted of a society falling apart. In the second part we get a revenge thriller in which Harry Brown dishes out helpings of whup-ass to the local scumbags. The transition between these two parts happens in a very long and dull scene in which Harry Brown goes to buy and gun off a drug dealer and instead watches them take drugs, act trippy, treat a woman badly and generally behave like complete arseholes. The film ends in a riot in which an army of hooded drug-crazed inner-city teenagers battle the police while - in a ridiculously unbelievable twist - one of Harry's friends turns against him.

The film is interesting as it has ignited debate in some quarters about the meaning of the film and how it reflects on Britain. Is it a reflection on - as David Cameron says - 'broken Britain'? Is the only justice that serves in times like this the sort of justice that Harry delivers? There are a number of reasons why I don't think this analysis makes sense.

Firstly I don't buy the premise upon which this analysis is based. There are scumbag drug dealers in Britain as there are anywhere in the world, but there
surely does not exist an army of riotous teenagers ready to create a bloodbath in their own community in the pursuit - as Harry puts it - of entertainment.

Secondly, even if we accept that there is a terrible problem in certain communities - martial justice is not the answer even in the context of the film. Heavy-handed policing is the spark that causes the violence at the end of the film; and the question is posed - albeit fleetingly - about where the violence will end if justice is based upon revenge.

Thirdly, the film is clear that the root cause of the problems in Harry's community are not simply the fact that there exist scumbag teenagers. We only see a few people actually buying drugs in the film (without people buying drugs the dealers would go and the problem would surely relent), one is a smack-head in a bar, the other is what appears to be a 'nice' middle class couple in the underpass. The message is that we as a society are all at fault for allowing problems like this to fester.

So the right wing can gush over Harry's 'justice' if they want. But the film's premise is not rooted in the real world, and they would harm us all should they use this film as a model for dealing with society's underclass.

Political ramblings aside though I do recommend this film, it has a number of good performances from the youngsters playing the hoodies and provides an interesting insight into how many on the social right view Britain's problems.