Cinema's most effective chillers have traditionally struck a nerve with audiences because they tap into our primal fears: fear of the dark, fear of the ocean, fear of having our still-beating hearts ripped out of our bodies… that sort of thing. But in recent years, a new genre of movie has emerged, one which delves into the black pit of middle-class values and emerges with the kind of story that would give Daily Mail readers night terrors.
We like to call them Hoodie
Horrors and there's something strangely and perversely attractive about them.
Now,
striding into this sub-genre of thriller comes Harry Brown. The story of a
retired ex-Marine and recent widower who goes postal following the vicious
murder of his best mate by a gang of mindless thugs. It's a gritty, raw,
violent and pretty unbelievable account of life on London's council estates.
Ignoring
the very real problem of black-on-black gun crime and instead depicting a
heightened reality in which kids ride around on mopeds and shoot young mums for
fun, it's a world in which the villains wear too much cheap gold, say "Blood" a
lot and act as if they've stepped off the set of Edward Woodward's The
Equalizer.
Simply put, it's ridiculous. But it's also brilliant, despite itself
and because of the sterling work of one man.
If anybody can carry off the whole Death-Wish-with-a-bus-pass shtick, it's the national treasure that we call Sir Michael Caine. Channelling Jack Carter and Harry Palmer into an older, more thoughtful, but no less kick-ass OAP, he makes the whole thing work by treating the material with a reverence it may not fully deserve and making us truly care about an old codger's attempts to put the world to rights.
