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| Michael Caine is a determined-looking gentleman on the poster for Daniel Barber's Harry Brown |
Harry is an aging ex-Marine, who lives in a crummy neighborhood and only has one friend, whom he plays chess with. When his friend gets murdered, Harry takes up killing off the young hoods responsible. Along with some other criminals.
Michael Caine (Shadow Run (1998)) does well in the semi-comical titular part as the avenging, walking-impaired vigilante here.
Harry Brown takes itself very seriously but is really one-dimensional and reactionary. It proposes that by shooting around 10 people, old man Brown makes his neighborhood safe again. The evil drug-pushing villains seem like mostly fantastic clichés.
England is (still) ugly and bleak in Harry Brown. It is written by Gary Young (Spivs (2004)) and directed by feature debuting Daniel Barber (The Keeping Ground (2014)).
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2009 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]
Michael Caine gives an interview to Empire Magazine about the film here
Cost: 7.3 mil. $
Box office: 10.3 mil. $
= Big flop
[Harry Brown premiered 12 September (Toronto International Film Festival) and runs 103 minutes. Shooting took place in November 2008 in Essex, London and in the Elstree Studios in the UK. The film opened #27 in 19 theaters to a 173k $ first weekend in North America, where it peaked in 67 theaters but never achieved a higher position and grossed 1.8 mil. $ (17.5 % of the total gross). The film's biggest market was its native UK with 6.6 mil. $ (64 %). North America was the 2nd biggest market, and the 3rd biggest was Australia with 1.4 mil. $ (13.6 %). Roger Ebert gave the film a 3/4 star review, translating to one notch better than this review. Harry Brown is fresh at 64 % with a 6/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]
What do you think of Harry Brown?
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