HANK'S RECOMMENDATIONS, 08/31/10:

HARRY BROWN , Here is moviedom's reflexive corrective to contemporary evil: the Death Wish vigilante film. Bronson made that kind of film work (indeed it became the template of such films), Joe Don Baker was successfully handed the baton in Walking Tall, Jodie Foster dropped it in The Brave One. But the genre hit really its mark and stride in two British films: Get Carter with Michael Cane, and The Limey with Terrence Stamp. While the Bronson film is historic, the last two are truly good movies offering briskly paced plots galvanizingly centered by their respective stars, performances. And here we have the incomparable Sir Michael Caine back his acting skills undiminished by age, indeed, if anything, burnished.

Set in an area of low class council estates amidst an urban decay ruled over by roving drug gangs, Caine is a retired just-widowed ex-Marine who simply wants to live his life making tea in his apartment, playing chess with his good friend Sid, while closing his eyes to the chaos without. When Sid is brutally murdered by young toughs, the ex-Mariner rises up in Caine (not unlike Eastwood in Unforgiven) and with his barely buried skills he takes care of business. With an unrelenting vengeance that makes him no happier, he nonetheless carries out his mission with a sense of duty, civic and personal that needs doing. Individual scenes and shots, especially in the beginning, are eloquent in limning character, and Caine carries the brutal plot to its histrionic end. Yes, the story is quite simple, but you can't take your eyes off Caine. Nor should you.

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