Harry Brown (***)

This is a vigilante movie with artistic pretensions and an elderly hero. Michael Caine, at 77, is half a decade older than Charles Bronson was when he made the last Death Wish movie. But this isn’t hack work. In fact, Caine gives one of his best performances as a grief-stricken widower angered when thugs target his best friend, who lives in a seedy London housing complex. As a portrait of grief and loss, the movie is quite good. There’s an aura of sadness about Caine even as he metes out some rough justice. Director Daniel Barber (working from a screenplay by Gary Young) takes the same spare approach as in his excellent short western, The Tonto Woman. On the other hand, the film can’t quite escape the trappings of its sub-genre. Harry and even the policewoman played by Emily Mortimer are solid characters, but the thugs are standard-issue villains simply put there to arouse Harry’s righteous fury. And ours. Just barely recommended.

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viewed 4/11/10 at Prince [PFS Spring Preview Festival] and reviewed 5/18/10

The Brave One (**1/4)

A ludicrous plot sinks this Death Wish derivative in which Jodie Foster gets frightened, then pissed off. It’s supposed to be about loss and grieving, but when public-radio host/crime victim Jodie grabs a gun, it quickly becomes something else. Jodie walks the streets like a slightly saner Travis Bickle, muttering about New York being the “world’s safest big city,” which should come as surprising news to residents of Honolulu, or Zurich, but never mind. She still manages, coincidentally, to run into more shady characters than ever got into Travis’s taxi. Terrence Howard helps out as a friendly, wise police detective. As an NRA recruiting film, this is okay, but not as a convincing story. Even the radio call-in show listeners sound phony. A very strange choice for Neil Jordan, director of more sophisticated fare such as The Crying Game and The End of the Affair.

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reviewed 11/9/07

Death Sentence (**3/4)

Kevin Bacon stars in this family drama (the first half, roughly) cum violent revenge thriller (the last 20 minutes, mostly). It’s adapted from the novel by Brian Garfield that was the sequel to Death Wish, and so is not the exploitation film promised by the title. However, when it comes to what would seem to be the logical ending, it’s actually only about an hour in. In seeking to avenge the senseless death of his son, the mild-mannered numbers cruncher makes himself into the kind of “animal” who perpetrated it. His wife and other son react negatively to the change, and the film seems to both deplore the cycle of violence that can result in tragedy and—given the reality of mainstream movie sensibilities—revel in the sort of rough justice he aims to deliver.

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reviewed 9/2/07