Michael Caine

Michael Caine is not a name you would normally associate with political controversy.

If Caine really wanted to convey a potent political message, he should have chosen a vehicle that offered a coherent stance on this complex issue. Whilst any proactive engagement with such a crucial topic is to be applauded, Harry Brown is nothing more than an entertaining thriller, despite any attempts to market it otherwise by award-winning actors or political columnists.  The film portrays the gang members as vermin that can only be dealt with by elimination, rather than endorsing a positive approach to the problem.D’Ancona predicts that the “polenta-eating, Guardian-reading classes” will object to the film’s dubious moral message of fighting violence with violence, and I am glad to prove him correct (although I plead not guilty to the polenta-eating charge).Yet the image of Britain portrayed in Harry Brown that D’Ancona and others are so eager to buy into (and use as propaganda) is an irresponsible distortion of reality, and the solutions the film offers are non-existent at best; at worst they are reprehensible.Perhaps Caine et al are correct in condemning a Labour government for failing to bolster the most underprivileged strata of our society. The social and economic situation that precipitates gang culture is one we ignore at our peril.Matthew D’Ancona, former editor of the Sunday Telegraph and the Spectator, was particularly keen to draw parallels between the film’s content and the Conservatives’ policies in a recent controversial article entitled ‘Michael Caine and truth of Cameron’s ‘Broken Society’’.Many are claiming the film’s ‘message’ champions the Tories’ ‘broken Britain’ campaign, and that Caine is echoing the concerns of a nation. Admittedly, they are aided by the fact that Caine himself is backing the Tories on this issue, justly claiming that a socialist government has failed to adequately cater for our disillusioned youth.Unsurprisingly, the ‘Daily Mail-esque’ sentiment expressed in the film has been leapt upon by those predisposed to appreciate this particular brand of hysteria.Caine, who was in a gang when he was a youngster, has called the film a ‘wake-up call’, a warning on the consequences of not dealing with the problems of our gang culture. He claims to have re-examined his attitudes towards these ‘thugs’, as a result of his research and interaction with gang members. The state has failed them, and they are in need of education, strong family units and methods of re-engaging with society. Caine has even recently called for the reintroduction of National Service as a possible means of combating the rapid disintegration of our society.In case you were wondering whether audiences are just reading a political message where there isn’t one, the director Daniel Barber, the writer Gary Young and indeed Michael Caine himself, have not shied away from pronouncing the film as an important piece of social commentary.It is only once his best friend Leonard is brutally murdered in an unprovoked attack by the local gang of ‘hoodies’ that Brown is spurred into action, and embarks on a bloody personal revenge mission, Dirty Harry style, to rid the estate of these violent thugs.The eponymous Brown is an upstanding pensioner living on a rundown council estate in South London (filmed in and around Elephant and Castle, yards from where Caine grew up), who minds his own business, and prefers to ignore the perpetual violence being carried out on the estate, consequently living a life of constant fear and intimidation.Yet his latest film, in which he portrays the vigilante ex-serviceman Harry Brown, has generated substantial waves due to its perceived social and political message.

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