My review of the film Harry Brown with Michael Caine

Watched ‘Harry Brown’ at the cinema, and was very impressed; I think my sister would be happy that I couldn’t really find any flaws with it. It was gritty, the cinematography great, and it certainly didn’t hold back when it came to showing disturbing scenes. The cinema experience itself also went hand in hand with the film, that is, when walking into the foyer and finding it empty, I was surprised to find the actual screen room 80% full with pensioners. I was also to discover that there were also some much younger people in the audience, and just like in the movie, they were disrespectful to the older generation among them. Just before the film actually started, I heard a voice followed shortly by a much louder one – ‘what, I can’t eat popcorn in the f***ing cinema?’. There was another little exchange that I couldn’t quite make out, but it soon ended with a couple getting up and moving to another seat; I was actually really embarrassed, but what could I do? Then just before the film started I heard the lady sitting next to me say ‘could they have made the text any smaller?’, referring to the beginning credits being actually very small, even I had to strain a little – didn’t they think about their target audience?! I wondered if the “senior” members of the audience were watching this film as it was a fantasy of theirs, that someone would come along to help them. If I was watching this film at home it would have been more comfortable to watch, but as this was a packed cinema, I had to sit through old people dying and the C word being used over and over again (along with all the other lovely words). I suppose in a way that this was really how it should be watched, with people from both age groups to hear how they both reacted to it. Many people have been pointing out that this film glorifies ‘the vigilante approach’, but it doesn’t, even Michael Caine himself said the film was about what could happen. My sister said I might wonder ‘how the hell could a pensioner could do those things’, but his skills and reactions were exactly as you would expect from someone about his age; thus the reason why he ended up in hospital after a shoot out.