REVIEW: Michael Caine Gets Violent, Mesmerizing Showcase in Harry Brown

The conundrum of Harry Brown is that Caine's performance makes it all worthwhile. Unconsciously, I'm sure, he undercuts the well-intentioned clumsiness of Barber's direction. Caine's Harry Brown is a reluctant vigilante: In an early scene, Leonard confesses how much he fears the neighborhood thugs and reveals the army-regulation weapon -- apparently a bayonet -- he's begun carrying. Harry urges him not to use it, and to speak to the police instead; later, he realizes that what seemed like wise counsel at the time was actually extremely unwise.

But Caine doesn't give us a dramatic breaking point, a big moment where we can see him deciding that he just can't take it any more. What's astonishing about this performance isn't that it's cozy or humane or reasoned; it's Caine's coldness that rings out here. I've heard people compare Harry Brown with another fairly recent old-codger vigilante movie, Gran Torino, and while I greatly enjoyed Eastwood's cranky, go-for-broke vitality in that picture (and respect him for recognizing that white people aren't the only people in the universe), Caine's performance goes further and runs much deeper.

There's been lots of ink, and plenty of pixels, spent on the lack of good roles for what we so euphemistically call aging actresses. But male actors don't have it much easier. And if you're Michael Caine -- Sir Michael Caine -- your problems may be trickier. You can always play Alfred in a Batman movie (and do it wonderfully). But beyond that, do you really want to settle for lovable duffer roles?

Those of us who love Michael Caine have to recognize that his capacity for coldness is part of what makes him great. And in that respect, what he does in Harry Brown is something of a bookend to his extraordinary, and extraordinarily chilly, turn in Mike Hodges' cold-blooded 1971 Get Carter, in which Caine plays a gangster first unraveling the mystery of his brother's gruesome death and then avenging it. I watched Get Carter again recently, and once again marveled at the fact that I can see nothing and everything in Caine's eyes: I still don't know quite what to make of the moment in which he puts a wad of bills in his teenaged niece's hands with the words "Be good. Don't trust boys," and turns to walk away from her, his eyes filled with blankness. There's protectiveness in his heart, but he'll be damned if he shows it.

Harry Brown is a very different character -- we're clued in, very early on, to his innate warmth and humanity, when he kisses the hand of his unconscious wife as she lies in her hospital bed. Later, when he corners the evil drug dealer he's already wounded, and fills in the grim details of how the thug is going to die, his face shows none of that warmth. Just before finishing the task at hand, he refers directly to the young girl the creep has been keeping in his den, who's just been overdosed with heroin. "You should have called an ambulance" -- he says, right before adding the famous Michael Caine pause -- "for the girl."

As he says those words, the decency in his heart is nowhere to be seen on his face, yet we know it's there. How does Caine do that? What he does in Harry Brown is more unsettling than it is exhilarating; he isn't working for kicks here, but for keeps. For Caine, the risk of becoming a beloved international treasure is high. He refuses that honor, for now.

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