So, let's remind ourselves of the three acts:
Act 1 - Set Up
Act 2 - Confrontation
Act 3 - Resolution
Act 1 - Set Up
Teenage gang members are seen acting out an initiation for someone to join them, involving the inhaling of a drug concoction. All this is being captured on a mobile phone camera.
Two of them are later seen filming themselves riding a moped through a London council estate. One of them has a handgun and shoots a young woman with her child in a pushchair. As the woman lies dead, the moped crashes into an on-coming car. It is not clear what happens to the two gang members.
Elsewhere on the same estate, pensioner and ex-soldier, Harry Brown and his friend, Leonard Atwell, are drinking in a run-down pub, and it is clear that Leonard is being targeted by the gang by random acts of harassment and threatening behaviour.
Act 2 - Confrontation
Leonard confides in Harry that he is being constantly tormented by the gang and that he might have to take measures to defend himself. This intensifies when his flat is partly set on fire.
Harry witnesses the actions of the gang for himself, but feels powerless to do anything, especially if it also means walking through the underpass which the gang use as their meeting place.
After Harry's terminally ill wife dies, he is also informed by the police that Leonard has been killed by the gang, but it looks like it was with his own weapon - a military bayonet, so any charge would be for manslaughter based on self-defence by the gang.
Harry is threatened at knife point on a canal footpath by one of the gang members. In the struggle, Harry kills the youth accidentally.
He witnesses yet another unprovoked attack by the gang on some innocent passers-by.
He knows now that he has to take the law into his own hands as the police seem powerless, despite a number of them being arrested for Len's death, only to be released on a lack of evidence.
Harry visits a local drug and weapons dealer in search of a gun. While he is there he notices a young woman left drugged and quite obviously abused by the dealer and his associate. Harry shoots the drug dealer, adding his own brand of retribution with his line that the criminal had not maintained his weapon, therefore that is why the dealer will die a slow and painful death, remembering back to his days in the army.
Harry then starts to target the gang members he feels were responsible for Len's death, picking out the most weakest first, in the hope he will get the answers he wants. He follows him to a parked car where the youth is being forced to have oral sex with a major drug dealer. Harry exacts revenge on the dealer and abducts Marky.
By torturing the gang member, Harry is shown the evidence of Len's death at the hands of the gang - it all having been recorded on a mobile phone.
Harry uses Marky as a shield when he goes down to the underpass in order to confront the main gang members, Noel and Carl. In the shoot-out, Harry kills Carl, and Marky is killed in the cross-fire. Noel escapes and Harry collapses.
Harry is released from hospital after suffering a bout of emphysema, brought on by the attack in the underpass.
The killings at the underpass brings Harry as a possible suspect by the police, particularly DCI Alice Frampton, who had informed him of Len's death.
Frampton's superior officer decides to make arrests relating to gang violence and drug dealing, provoking a riot on the estate.
Harry, Frampton and her seriously injured colleague, Hicock, take refuge in the pub.
It turns out that the landlord, Sid, is Noel's uncle and decide to kill the two police officers, along with Harry. Hicock is suffocated by Sid, and as Noel attempts to strangle Frampton, he is shot by Harry. Sid is then shot by a police marksman, ending Harry and Alice's ordeal.
Act 3 - Resolution
At a police press conference after the riot, Hicock and Frampton are given awards for their bravery in trying to resolve the estate's problems, There are also flat denials of any vigilante involvement. Frampton leaves the conference knowing the truth.
Meanwhile, Harry is able to at last walk through the underpass without fear.
Cause and Effect
The trouble caused by the gang has the effect that Leonard tries to take them on, resulting in his death.
The ineffectiveness of the police reaction, together with the harrassment Harry witnesses forces him to avenge Len's death.
The police arrests cause the riots to occur - the effect of this is Harry, Frampton and Hicock taking refuge in the pub.
It could also be argued that the social situation on the estate and in Britain in general, might be the cause of the gang's behaviour?
Enigmas
Who was directly responsible for Len's death?
Will Harry get revenge?
Will the gang be arrested?
Character Arcs
Harry starts the film as a pensioner who feels he can do nothing to prevent the gang terrorising the council estate. Through the death of his friend, Len, he draws upon his previous military experience to take on the gang. At the his actions have provided some semblance of law and order to the estate.
Alice Frampton is very much 'by the book' as a police officer at the start, although she does see at the end that a cover-up has taken place with the "non-vigilante" line of her superior officer. She perhaps also realises that the lull in gang-related crime since Harry's actions is only a temporary measure, and her role as a police officer can do little to prevent it from happening again.
No comments:
Post a Comment