'Harry Brown' filled with wild emotions

A new film in my area has compelled me to express wonder at how such virulent realism can be so artfully brought to the screen. Michael Caine is the lead in 'Harry Brown' which is a story filled with a tough, edgy harshness that virtually overwhelms members of the audience. In this tale Michael Caine plays the part of an older British man (Harry Brown) on a pension and the most beguiling thing about this cinematic production is the strong-minded way Caine's character copes with his very harrowing environment. There are numerous tough youths who lurk in his area. The saga starts up vigorously when one of Caine's old-guy friends, Leonard Attwell, is done away with. The police start an intense investigation checking on the indefatigable Harry Brown and others. A good duo of acting pros, Emily Mortimer (as D.I. Alice Frampton) and Charlie Creed-Miles (as D.S. Terry Hicock) brought a lot of heady, gritty good realistic zest to the picaresque story. In the way that the film focuses on older people and how they deal with the horrors of modern life the sense of being intensely mesmerized is quite prevalent. Indeed this thing is not just the average story. The feeling one has is that this is sort of like the hard-toned film that was Clint Eastwood's achievement in 'Gran Torino' and yet in so many ways this British artistic work is much more of a profound statement about anguish and difficult and tough ways to deal with the complex realism that confronts us all in modern life. Amazing is the only way to adequately describe the fine-etched dramatic fervor that Michael Caine's performance as Harry Brown represents. Emily Mortimer produces a characterization of infinite compelling dramatic style that is so scintillating for the cinematic enthusiast to get engulfed in. The harshness of contemporary society is interpreted with great skill in this work. The director, Daniel Barber, has put together quite a panorama of performances in this film because much like great British theatrical works (witness John Osborne's, 'Look Back in Anger' for example)there is a tough mood of emotional rawness that is obviously the same kind of creaking muscles that all of us possess trying to deal with the myriad of rigorous realities that comprise the complexities of our difficult modern circumstances. I had an eery feeling watching this film for there seemed to be some of the difficult sensual and vile dramatic fabric that some of the early tough writings of Truman Capote possessed. Again, 'Harry Brown' is quite a film and the top appeal of the story is the well-honed performance of the very clever Mr. Michael Caine.