Hot for Harry Brown

Harry Brown, a story about a "vigilante pensioner" (as one character puts it), is a damn dark little crime flick with strong characterization and stellar performances up and down the credit roll. Although it's been compared to Michael Winner's Death Wish, such a comparison shows little appreciation for its strengths.

The film is much stronger and grimmer than its marketing campaign suggests. In fact, it's tonally similar to aspects of Gasper Noe's I Stand Alone and Irreversible. That's probably why I warmed to it so quickly.

Yes, it's about a bloke done wrong who procures a gun and uses it to eliminate those whose actions have deemed them unworthy of hosting a beating heart. That bloke is Michael Caine. He has just lost his wife and best friend. The animals who patrol the estate where he lives have created a hell on earth for its residents. Caine must do things like avoid the local subway tunnel (the type of place where Monica Bellucci was raped in Irreversible) because these creatures inhabit it like dirty, psychopathic trolls. These miscreants think nothing of offing a frail elderly man or raping a woman passing by with her boyfriend.

Cinematographer Martin Ruhe and director Daniel Barber have created a work of dark, nasty, scary art. Helped considerably by Michael Caine, an actor of incredible authority, Harry Brown rises way above genre expectations. It is consistently gripping and fascinating, but isn't handicapped by ADD-ridden camera tricks and editing. It is paced exactly as Caine's character is paced. When shit happens, it happens as a direct outgrowth of Caine's mental process.

The film dedicates a little screen time to a powerful indictment of the sociopathic mind where various suspects in a murder are questioned by police. The camera cuts between the interviews as they deny wrongdoing and verbally assault the police. This sequence is intense and terribly disturbing for what it says about a culture and for what it doesn't need to say directly about the thanklessness of police work.

The outrage Harry Brown feels doesn't feel like the contrived outrage of Death Wish -- still a good film, nonetheless, but a textbook example of audience manipulation and rampant implausibility; Harry Brown's outrage feels like the pain of a friend.

This vigilante pensioner is a force of nature, and because we get to know him, his actions are both tragic and victorious.

No Morire Sola (I'll Never Die Alone)

I read the imdb reviewer Coventry's positive piece on this film -- "The South American I Spit On Your Grave" -- and went in search of it immediately.

I'm very partial to films such as I Spit on Your Grave and have shot a rape scene or two myself (Defenceless, Beyond The Pale, Marauders).

The Spanish/Argentinian title is No Morire Sola and the English title is I'll Never die Alone.

The only DVD I found (and purchased) was the Japanese version, which is retitled The Hell.

It's a pretty striking cover.

Needless to say, I was primed for something pretty special.

Unfortunately, the film fell way below expectations.

Let's be honest -- the draw of a film like this for the viewer is the opportunity to see (endure) scenes of aestheticized violence (rape and revenge).

Films such as Irreversible and I Spit on Your Grave promise a second-hand, vicarious experience of raping, being raped, getting angry, taking revenge, and feeling that justice is served.

Cinema is all about vicarious experience, even if the experience is often couched in misleading, academic, esoteric language.

Exploitation cinema appeals to our basic instincts. It gives us a safe arena to experience the unknown ,the unpalatable, and the downright illegal. If it's done well, with pace, fury, energy and passion, it's entertaining.

Unfortunately, No Morire Sola, though clearly well-intentioned, fails to perform its primary function.

Four girls driving across the Argentinian countryside are attacked by rapists. In an extended sequence, which, let's be honest, is the reason for watching this, the girls are raped and left for dead. Later, they are recaptured, roughed up some more, and left for dead. Later again, the surviving girls take revenge on the rapists.

It's the classic exploitation set-up, and on paper it works.

The challenge when you're screwing around with such familiar, been-done-a-thousand-times subject matter is making the predictable situations interesting. And impactful. Where the film fails initially is in the cinematography department. I don't know what video camera they were using, but the look of the film is terrible. Have you ever shot a person against a window and they go dark while the window behind looks like a blast from an atomic bomb. Well, there's a lot of that look in this. A solution would have been reflectors and more judicious placement of the camera.

The script? It's not in plain sight. The characters wander from scene to scene with no rigid purpose. There is zero suspense. The acting is drab. The pacing is haphazard. Overall, it's a sloppy effort.

So what are the rape sequences like? You know you want to know that. Well, as rape sequences go, they're flat and boring. Compared to similar sequences in Irreversible, the Death Wish films, I Spit On Your Grave, Straw Dogs, The Hunting Party, White Rose Campus - Then, Everybody Gets Raped, Raping!, Assault Jack the Ripper, All Women Are Whores, Fair Game, Flower and Snake, Red To Kill, Thriller - A Cruel Picture, they don't justify the film's existence. Which is a shame. Because it only really exists for these.

And the revenge sequences, of course.

Sad to say, they're flat, too. A bit of shooting. An extended burial sequence which just goes on and on to fill screen time.

A final criticism is the sound. It's almost non-existent. Although there are a few creepy music cues (courtesy of Hernan Penner), meaty, powerful sound FX such as gunshots, stabs, and punches are missing altogether. Their absence totally undermines some potentially harrowing scenes.

No doubt about it, the Argentinian artwork is stunning, and the film's locations are well chosen. The art makes me me think of Jessica Biel in Marcus Nispel's The Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake. And the heat of that memorable Texas day.

Clearly, director Adrian Garcia Bogliano is a fan of Texas. He even frames the girls' van similarly in an early scene. It's also an indication of what he was striving for. He does have the heat, and he does have the set-up, but the rotten aesthetics let the film down. Yes, the photography stinks. And I'm not saying that because it's video and low budget. It costs the same to shoot video well. You just need a director of photography who knows what they're doing.

Next time, I hope Mr. Bogliano will not allow the photography to compromise his vision. In an ideal world, it should enhance it.

***

The stills used in this piece are not frame grabs; the movie doesn't look this good.