We know you Americans like Michael Caine, by the way you keep producing dire remakes of his films. Okay, The Italian Job wasn't horrendous (although personally I'm more excited about the forthcoming Bollywood version, which Indian film chiefs have promised will feature "lots of singing and dancing," in case we didn't know what to expect), but our own Jude Law should be thrown into movie jail for participating in your pathetic reimagining of Alfie, and Stallone should be made to stand in the corner and have his HGH Club for Men Club membership revoked for what he did to Get Carter (which Caine briefly appears in, but my point still stands). But Brits love Michael Caine.
He's film royalty here, and has been dutifully talking to all manner of fawning journalists recently to promote Harry Brown. Movieline first reported on Brown back at TIFF -- it's a brainy, British Death Wish starring 76-year-old screen legend as the eponymous cardigan-fancier who goes native after his best pal is murdered by local hoodlums. Caine more or less reiterates the same things each time: he's concerned about the state of young people in Britain, he doesn't have any films in the pipeline (although he's contracted to "turn up as butler" if they make another Batman), and he waited a year and a half to do Harry Brown as it was the only script in that time that resonated with him.
The concept is too familiar for lazy reporters to discuss without mentioning Gran Torino, and I am no exception, although Harry Brown succeeds in areas that Eastwood's entertaining yet ridiculous yarn fails. Other than a couple of weak supporting characters and a slightly overblown climax, Harry Brown is a brutal, compelling drama with a palpable sense of threat; whereas Gran Torino's Boyz N The Hood-lite gangstas are about as scary as me, the kids in Harry Brown are recognisably horrible, nasty tykes with no moral compass, and the film is at times so scummy it makes Eastwood's epic seem like a fairytale. Also, Caine plays it totally straight, with no comical idiosyncrasies or one-liners, and scores extra points by not singing in the style of Gonzo from The Muppet Show over the end credits.
That's just how we roll, America. A world away from other contributions to the vigilante genre of late, such as France's utterly dumb Taken, and the pyrotechnic excesses of your own Law Abiding Citizen (both starring sons of the U.K., but they need to pay their mortgages somehow), these modern British Westerns play smaller, less hysterical, and infinitely more disturbing.
The prime example from this decade is Dead Man's Shoes, directed by Shane Meadows and starring the great Paddy Considine. A small-town drama about a returning paratrooper who starts killing bad elements of the community, it was written by Meadows and Considine as a response to the sort of local atrocities that don't get dealt with, let alone reported. It's an inventive, claustrophobic and unnerving film which you should find a way to see if you haven't already. "The film for me is about how easily people who do the most awful shit can just carry on with their lives, and just fucking bury it," Considine once told me, and said the film's lo-fi intensity was inspired by The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and Deliverance.
You may know Considine from Jim Sheridan's In America, or as the unfortunate British journalist at the beginning of The Bourne Ultimatum, or as one of Simon Pegg's unsupportive officers in Hot Fuzz. His latest collaboration with Meadows, a funny, improvised comedy about a misguided roadie called Le Donk And Scor-Zay-Zee, just came out here on DVD, which gave me the excuse to grill him for a few minutes. I asked him if he turned down projects that don't strike a chord compared to labours of love like Dead Man's Shoes. "Don't get me wrong," he says, "I enjoyed being on Cinderella Man, I enjoyed all the company I was with, Ron Howard and all the people who work for him, it was a great experience. But I come away from those things thinking, 'Man, I didn't get to show them my best work, I didn't get to give them anything.' I've walked away from roles like Bourne and thought, 'Anyone could have played that role. Maybe I shouldn't have.'"
Like Caine with Harry Brown, Considine recently didn't act for months until he found a script that meant something to him. He admits his experiences on films such as_ Dead Man's Shoes_ have spoilt him. "When I work with the likes of Shane Meadows or Jim Sheridan, the rapport is so important", he says. "Sometimes when you work on these bigger films, if I'm standing here with my note about the script and Russell Crowe's standing there with his note, Ron Howard's not gonna be paying much mind to what my little note is. That's how it works. So you sort of shut your mouth and don't say anything. There's a kind of insignificance there. I'm just used to a certain amount of collaboration. It validates you."
Here's hoping for more.
Tally-ho, bitches.