Harry Brown

Michael Caine must’ve gotten a taste for vigilante justice while he was on the Batman movie sets. Here, he plays the title character, a recent widower living in a dumpy London tenement terrorized by evil youth. After one of his friends is murdered for taking a stand, Harry, a former soldier, gets some guns and goes on a rampage. This is trash with a capital “T,” but Caine does such a good job of embodying Harry with warmth and sympathy that you won’t care. Director Daniel Barber gets carried away with the CGI blood spurts, something the film certainly did not need. This is pretty much Death Wish for the geriatric, but Caine brings credibility to the proceedings; watching him in gunfights while trying to keep his breath and stay on his feet is actually pretty cool. Also stars Emily Mortimer as a concerned detective.