Harry Brown (Michael Caine) is a former Marine.  He, as well as many others in the neighbourhood, has had to put up with the shenanigans of a set of young hoods that terrorize their living area and sell drugs.  After the death of his best friend, Leonard (David Bradley), Harry has decided he’s had enough and has to teach these children a lesson.  He goes on a hunt for the man that murdered his friend the only way that he knows will work, without the police.

What Daniel Barber has done is he’s created a mediocre revenge film that’s elevated to an interesting one with the injection of a great leading actor.  Michael Caine has been acting since the 1950s and from then to now he’s always known how to make his presence be known.  He was Carter in the original Get Carter in 1971, he’s been in the business long enough to be reprising roles and cameoing in remakes of films that he was in the original of.  I say all this for you to understand that Caine isn’t just any regular actor that will only play butlers and mentors, he is a man that actually knows his art and he knows especially how to kick ass.  Now I’m not claiming that this is the next Taken – because it isn’t – but it definitely is a capable revenge film.

Now do I buy the idea of an eighty year old man managing to enact revenge on a gang of 20-something year olds?  Nope not really.  Gary Young definitely did a good job of trying to make this grandfather character believably be menacing.  He set up the background of our character, being an ex-Marine and all.  He even went and made the scenarios that he found himself in perfectly doable for a man of Caine’s physical abilities.  It even goes so far as to later in the film when Harry goes after the children of his neighbourhood you see him struggle and even suffer some physical consequences of his attempt to harm them.  However, in the end the film finds itself in relatively laughable territory.

I find myself sitting here and typing this review trying to think of other elderly action heroes and immediately what comes to mind is the film that was released two years ago, Gran Torino.  Gran Torino was this movie all over again, except it was staring Clint Eastwood.  Now why did I buy Clint when I refuse to buy Caine?  I don’t know, maybe it’s because I’ve never been able to not be afraid of Eastwood while Caine for the last decade has been the lovable grandfather character on screen.

In the end the movie is better than average, but never lets you think that it’ll be anything better than that.  What the movie has against it is the believability factor and that no matter how good a performance Caine delivers that when all is said and done that the movie is utterly forgettable.

IMDB says 7.4/10

Rotten Tomatoes says 67%

I say 6.5/10