"Harry Brown" Ride into town ...
By Eric Shapiro - Skidmore News 4/30/2010
Harry Brown" seems intended as an indignant reply to the shades of gray that have descended on Hollywood and the popular media like a fog.
It is no longer acceptable for a "serious" film or work of art to portray unadulterated evil with a straight face, as in the Westerns from which screenwriter Gary Young and director Daniel Barber clearly draw their inspiration.
Granted, a willingness on the part of Hollywood to view morality in all its complexity can hardly be considered a bad thing.
Still, it is growing more and more common to hear the foul deeds of every criminal explained away with amateur psychology and sociology 101, in everything from "serious dramas" to superhero flicks.
In recent years, perhaps in part as a response to the cowboy posturing of our last president and his followers, Hollywood has taken to wallowing in pools of moral ambiguity that, while ostensibly indicative of greater sophistication, has become wretchedly clichéd.
Screenwriters have taken to bating critics, the academy and audiences with spectacles of self-flagellation, liberal guilt and moral relativism. Shows like "The Wire," "The Sopranos" and "Deadwood," despite their undeniable artistic value, have humanized evil.
Other, less sophisticated works have followed suit, contributing to a common, politically correct consensus that criminals automatically deserve sympathy rather than condemnation.
It is healthy to accept ambiguity. It is unhealthy to forget that evil exists, and its perpetrators are sometimes driven by no more than the viciousness of the human condition.
With his body afflicted by emphysema and his mind haunted by the ghosts of his past, protagonist Harry Brown, a pensioner living in an impoverished council estate in South London, does not initially come across as your typical crime fighter. It takes the death of his wife from natural causes and the murder of his best friend by a local youth gang to rouse him from his stupor.
A former veteran traumatized during his stint in Northern Ireland, Brown has more rage than your grandpa when your parents tried to put him in a home. Unfortunately for the bad guys, he also has the instincts of a trained killer, acquired during his stint as a soldier in Northern Ireland.
Once he begins his vigilante career, this old man doesn't waste time pondering moral dilemmas, wallowing in self-doubt and trying to rehabilitate criminals.
No, he has a clear sense of right and wrong, and those who violate it are, for the most part, shown no mercy. Indeed, his one moment of empathy is rewarded with a gunshot. Harry Brown knows how to fight crime: like a cowboy.
Law enforcement, on the other hand, is portrayed as mostly ineffectual. The police, in one of the most powerful scenes in the film, show admirable restraint in dealing with a crowd of rioters. A hail of debris and Molotov cocktails are their reward.
As the pigs are literally forced back by an advancing wall of fire and hoodlums, their riot shields are the only thing standing between them and grievous harm but they don't so much as squeeze off a warning shot (perhaps for fear of lawsuits and/or the British equivalent of Al Sharpton?) Quite a powerful metaphor.
And just what motivates inner city youth to behave so badly? The sheer fun of it, apparently. That, and depravity passed on from generation to generation.
Terrible living conditions and a collective sense of hopelessness are overlooked as factors. But "Harry Brown" isn't overly concerned with such questions. Small-minded? Perhaps. Refreshing? Absolutely.
Causes be damned, Harry Brown, portrayed with typical aplomb by Michael Cain, is concerned with solutions. No more apologetic dilly-dallying. No more wasting rivers of ink on examining the criminal mind as police officers and harmless old men are left in harms way.
Break out yo gats! Torture and vigilantism are perfectly effective methods of ridding your neighborhood of criminal scum. Tellingly, the film ends with Brown confidently striding through an underpass that, earlier in the film, was inhabited by a pack of vicious drug dealers.
The protagonist, played with typical aplomb by Michael Caine, is an anachronism, a man lost in the modern world. One scene particularly illustrative of this fact is when he must ask a youth he is holding at gunpoint to play a video on his cell phone.
Even more out of place is his absolutist sense of morality. "Harry Brown" offers little criticism of its main character's brutal methods and lack of remorse. For this reason, it is sure to be one of the pinkest elephants in theaters this year.
The film will likely offend folks of various political persuasions, from law and order conservatives, with its unflinchingly negative portrayal of law enforcement officials, to bleeding-heart liberals, with its unapologetic portrayal of urban-youth crime.
However, "Harry Brown" ultimately fails as a serious political statement. It is as shallow in its message as its more standard intellectual equivalents.
It succeeds, however, as top-notch entertainment that challenges viewers to think about a major problem in a different way. Personally, I'll take that any day over the same old rhetoric from filmmakers that hawk the status quo.
Harry Brown" seems intended as an indignant reply to the shades of gray that have descended on Hollywood and the popular media like a fog.
It is no longer acceptable for a "serious" film or work of art to portray unadulterated evil with a straight face, as in the Westerns from which screenwriter Gary Young and director Daniel Barber clearly draw their inspiration.
Granted, a willingness on the part of Hollywood to view morality in all its complexity can hardly be considered a bad thing.
Still, it is growing more and more common to hear the foul deeds of every criminal explained away with amateur psychology and sociology 101, in everything from "serious dramas" to superhero flicks.
In recent years, perhaps in part as a response to the cowboy posturing of our last president and his followers, Hollywood has taken to wallowing in pools of moral ambiguity that, while ostensibly indicative of greater sophistication, has become wretchedly clichéd.
Screenwriters have taken to bating critics, the academy and audiences with spectacles of self-flagellation, liberal guilt and moral relativism. Shows like "The Wire," "The Sopranos" and "Deadwood," despite their undeniable artistic value, have humanized evil.
Other, less sophisticated works have followed suit, contributing to a common, politically correct consensus that criminals automatically deserve sympathy rather than condemnation.
It is healthy to accept ambiguity. It is unhealthy to forget that evil exists, and its perpetrators are sometimes driven by no more than the viciousness of the human condition.
With his body afflicted by emphysema and his mind haunted by the ghosts of his past, protagonist Harry Brown, a pensioner living in an impoverished council estate in South London, does not initially come across as your typical crime fighter. It takes the death of his wife from natural causes and the murder of his best friend by a local youth gang to rouse him from his stupor.
A former veteran traumatized during his stint in Northern Ireland, Brown has more rage than your grandpa when your parents tried to put him in a home. Unfortunately for the bad guys, he also has the instincts of a trained killer, acquired during his stint as a soldier in Northern Ireland.
Once he begins his vigilante career, this old man doesn't waste time pondering moral dilemmas, wallowing in self-doubt and trying to rehabilitate criminals.
No, he has a clear sense of right and wrong, and those who violate it are, for the most part, shown no mercy. Indeed, his one moment of empathy is rewarded with a gunshot. Harry Brown knows how to fight crime: like a cowboy.
Law enforcement, on the other hand, is portrayed as mostly ineffectual. The police, in one of the most powerful scenes in the film, show admirable restraint in dealing with a crowd of rioters. A hail of debris and Molotov cocktails are their reward.
As the pigs are literally forced back by an advancing wall of fire and hoodlums, their riot shields are the only thing standing between them and grievous harm but they don't so much as squeeze off a warning shot (perhaps for fear of lawsuits and/or the British equivalent of Al Sharpton?) Quite a powerful metaphor.
And just what motivates inner city youth to behave so badly? The sheer fun of it, apparently. That, and depravity passed on from generation to generation.
Terrible living conditions and a collective sense of hopelessness are overlooked as factors. But "Harry Brown" isn't overly concerned with such questions. Small-minded? Perhaps. Refreshing? Absolutely.
Causes be damned, Harry Brown, portrayed with typical aplomb by Michael Cain, is concerned with solutions. No more apologetic dilly-dallying. No more wasting rivers of ink on examining the criminal mind as police officers and harmless old men are left in harms way.
Break out yo gats! Torture and vigilantism are perfectly effective methods of ridding your neighborhood of criminal scum. Tellingly, the film ends with Brown confidently striding through an underpass that, earlier in the film, was inhabited by a pack of vicious drug dealers.
The protagonist, played with typical aplomb by Michael Caine, is an anachronism, a man lost in the modern world. One scene particularly illustrative of this fact is when he must ask a youth he is holding at gunpoint to play a video on his cell phone.
Even more out of place is his absolutist sense of morality. "Harry Brown" offers little criticism of its main character's brutal methods and lack of remorse. For this reason, it is sure to be one of the pinkest elephants in theaters this year.
The film will likely offend folks of various political persuasions, from law and order conservatives, with its unflinchingly negative portrayal of law enforcement officials, to bleeding-heart liberals, with its unapologetic portrayal of urban-youth crime.
However, "Harry Brown" ultimately fails as a serious political statement. It is as shallow in its message as its more standard intellectual equivalents.
It succeeds, however, as top-notch entertainment that challenges viewers to think about a major problem in a different way. Personally, I'll take that any day over the same old rhetoric from filmmakers that hawk the status quo.