Harry Brown

Britain is broken, almost beyond repair.

Knife crime has, shockingly, become part of everyone's lives as teenagers take their arguments onto the streets.

Fear and insecurity fan the flames of racism and intolerance, while our prisons are full to bursting as police struggle to maintain law and order.

In these dark and depressing times, unlikely heroes make a stand against all of the savagery.

For Daniel Barber's brutal and uncompromising directorial debut, that hero is a retired Marine, whose best friend dies at the hands of a gang of yobs.

Rather than sit back and let these animals run amok, the old-timer vows revenge by speaking the only language that these young men and women know: punishment.

Sir Michael Caine delivers one of his finest performances for years in a role thematically reminiscent of Clint Eastwood's harrowing thriller Gran Torino.

Barber's film is more gritty and hard-hitting, opening with a gang initiation that comprises shooting a nameless woman on the street.

It is the first of many instances of senseless bloodletting as the tightly-wound narrative leads the eponymous vigilante on a heartbreaking tour of squalid drug dens and crime-riddled housing estates.

Harry Brown (Caine) is a widower who lives alone now his wife has passed away on a housing estate, which is under the control of a gang of thugs led by the sadistic Noel Winters (Ben Drew).

The war veteran's closest pal Leonard (David Bradley) is being terrorised by Noel's posse - they push dog faeces through his letterbox and even set fire to the old man's doormat.

'I'm not going to take it anymore,' sobs Leonard, revealing a concealed blade he will use to protect himself.

A day later, DCI Frampton (Emily Mortimer) and sidekick Hicock (Charlie Creed-Miles) arrive with desperate news: Leonard has been found stabbed to death in an underpass.

Harry swears revenge and sets about tracking down the young men who killed his pal, then makes sure they pay for their heinous crime with their sad, worthless lives.

Harry Brown is an incredibly accomplished debut for British director Barber.

The film strikes very few false emotional notes, emboldened by Caine's fearless and mesmerising lead performance as a man with nothing to lose, who may very well pay with his life as he doles out tough justice.

Gary Young's script focuses almost entirely on Leonard through a grimy lens, but there are odd glimmers of wry humour, such as when Frampton's superior DI Andrew Childs (Iain Glen) deadpans incredulously: 'You're telling me this escalating violence is the result of a vigilante pensioner?' By necessity, scenes of violence are graphic and unsettling, punctuating a narrative that doesn't pretend to hold any easy answers to 21st-century social malaise.

Britain is gravely ill and there is no cure in sight.

• Release Date: Friday 13 November 2009

• Certificate: 18

• Runtime: 103mins