A Matter of Who and Why
Harry Brown is “a movie about the one guy who did something,” Michael Caine recently said to Movieline‘s Stu VanAirsdale. “The idea [in making it] was, If you don’t do something, then this is what innocent people will do.’
“A reporter said to me yesterday, ‘Have you ever seen this with a proper audience?’ I said, ‘No.’ He said, ‘When you kill those people, they all cheered.’ And I said, ‘That’s exactly what I’m talking about. That’s how far it’s gone.’ You’ve got to do something, because people are cheering the killing.”
Well…c’mon. People have been cheering the right killings for decades. If the bad guy is getting his, and if it feels just and righteous and satisfying, Average Joes are going to go “yeah!” and “woo-hoo!” People cheered the Death Wish killings back in ’73. People cheered when Dustin Hoffman started killing the home invaders in Straw Dogs. Audiences watching Day of the Dolphin cheered and laughed, even, when a crew of bad guys were blown up by a mine placed on the hull of their yacht by a dolphin. I’ve read somewhere that audiences howled their asses off when Grace Kelly shot Robert Wilke in the back in High Noon.
My initial reaction to Harry Brown, boiled down, was this: “Caine, an East End roughneck in his youth, knows how to eyeball the bad guys and give them all sorts of pain with magnificent conviction and style. The film satisfies as nicely in this regard as the confrontation scenes in Clint Eastwood‘s Gran Torino, if not more so.”
In the late 30s and early 40s, Basil Rathbone probably saw his death cheered every other week.
I really have a hard time understanding what point Caine is trying to make in that quote. Is “you doing something” meaning a response to gang violence, or to crowds cheering violent movies, and what is the “something” you are supposed to do, and how does it relate to what Harry Brown does (which is kill people thereby inspiring audiences to cheer)?
Wells: You were vocal about your distaste for the audience cheering the Eli Roth baseball-bat scene in Inglourious Basterds.
Saw the movie, thought it was slickly made but pretty derivative and lacking much of an emotional current. Also, that Pauline Kael line about Straw Dogs being a fascistic work of art? It’s true here, and in spades.
Greatest audience reaction I ever saw was at the end of Lethal Weapon 2 when a guy sitting a couple of rows in front of me stood up as Danny Glover aimed his six shooter at Joss Ackland and shouted “Blow his fucking head off!!!!” To which the audience loudly cheered. Danny then blew Joss’s head off and the audience cheered again.
Great stuff.
People who don’t get the visceral charge of cinematic violence, or who are troubled by “the moral implications” of vengeance, shouldn’t be allowed to watch movies in the first place. It boggles the mind that after 100 years of cinema and thousands of years of theater, drama, what-have-you, milquetoast pussy critics still complain about “fascism” or get uncomfortable about seeing violence depicted. You know, violence, aka the thing at the root of all drama, be it emotional or physical violence.
If you’re that weak-willed that you cringe at fictional violence, I don’t know how you make it from your car to the CVS sliding doors without breaking down from a panic attack.
“Wells: You were vocal about your distaste for the audience cheering the Eli Roth baseball-bat scene in Inglourious Basterds.”
Yep, and he’s clearly articulated his reasons for that distaste several times, let it go.
It’s as old as readers getting pleasure from The Count of Monte Cristo exacting revenge. Til you get to the end and feel hollow becuz revenge was his whole life for the second half of the book.
“Matter of Who and Why” exactly. I remember the satisfying thrill of Bruce Willis’s Butch almost home-free in Pulp Fiction, but he stops at the door and decides, no, can’t leave Marcellas Wallace to those two hillbillies; now where’s the perfect weapon?
Or Mel Gibson getting his revenge across the Scottish landscape in Braveheart.
Or Liam Neeson in Taken…
Or Norm MacDonald in Dirty Work…
Yeah, everybody’s a sensitive, touchy-feelie milquetoast lefty who thinks we should just “understand” the poor criminals who are merely a product of their particular socioeconomic situation…
Until THEIR car stereo is stolen, then it’s time to crank up the Jimmy Page and put on a ratty wool cap and go prowling downtown LA for Larry Fishburne III and his ragtag crew dancing gay-ly to their boombox at the bus stop.
“SUPERFIIIIIIIINE.” “Easy my man… We got business.”
(cue Page riff….)
“A reporter said to me yesterday, ‘Have you ever seen this with a proper audience?’ I said, ‘No.’ He said, ‘When you kill those people, they all cheered.’ And I said, ‘That’s exactly what I’m talking about. That’s how far it’s gone.’ You’ve got to do something, because people are cheering the killing.”
Everything happens for the first time now–as if the DEATH WISH series never existed.
The problem with HARRY BROWN is that most of the punk-ass villains in it are faceless. The visceral charge we may get from watching a specific character played by Joss Ackland or Alan Rickman or Basil Rathbone or even Andy Robinson buy it has been replaced by a kind of generic blank slate, onto which presumably the audience will project its own fears/hatreds of whoever they happen to have a problem with that week — white trash meth-heads, black gang-bangers, Hispanic party elephants, Albanian sex-traders, Amazon women from the moon, etc.
This kind of crap (sorry, DEATH WISH cultists!) may be fine for what it is, but forgive those of us who expect a bit more from Michael Caine. He’s actually pretty human in HARRY BROWN, which ironically works against the kind of film it is.
Has anyone tried to watch DEATH WISH lately? I’m remembering all of the cheesy over-the-top stuff, from Bronson’s character being a “conscientious objector” in WW II (and just look at him now!), Jeff Goldblum as one of the assailants, the daughter being in a mental institution run by nuns, Bronson playing space age bachelor pad music in his apartment. It is all very silly.
Prager, don’t forget when he re-wallpapers his apartment in those crazy patterns? I swear, if Michael Winner hadn’t been Michael Winner, he’d have been Stanley Kubrick. All his 70s-80s stuff is so surreal, full of bizarre, inept angles and crazy compositions and oversized shots.
Also let’s not forget DW1 spends like 40 minutes on Bronson’s weekend retreat with Stuart Margolin, on down to that phony Wild West show they attend AND a LANDSCAPING MONTAGE.
All reasons why DEATH WISH II is infinitely superior.
Michael Winner now spends his time selling insurance in the UK. With those squinty eyes and that piggy face, he’s an unsettling presence: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KdO4epI7oyg
Haven’t seen DEATH WISH II. I guess I should check it out. I’m a fan of a lot of Bronson’s 70s stuff, but DEATH WISH probably would’ve been better with someone like William Devane in the a role.
Prager – Also, Christopher Guest plays a cop in it.
“Yep, and he’s clearly articulated his reasons for that distaste several times, let it go.”
Yep, a scene that was clearly intended to make the audience uncomfortable made him uncomfortable. What bad filmmaking!
Anyone here tried to watch Michael Winner’s last feature film PARTING SHOTS? It’s essentially DEATH WISH played for comedy, as UK pop star Chris Rea (in his only acting role) goes killing off everyone who ever wronged him. So terrible it almost reaches what Dave White calls “awful is the new awesome” levels.
Eh, stories play first as tragedy, then as farce.
I’ve tried saying this till I’m blue in the face, but I’ll try one more time – there is a world of difference between films like POINT BLANK and GET CARTER, and films like DEATH WISH. Walker (from POINT BLANK) and Jack Carter (GET CARTER) are both operating outside of society in the first place. They wouldn’t even think of going to the cops. So they’re simply revenge movies, and they can be judged on their merits (or in the case of the remakes of POINT BLANK and GET CARTER, the lack thereof). DEATH WISH and its ilk, on the other hand, are all about how the “liberals” and the “permissive society” that spawned these criminals and coddle them at the expense of innocent people. Instead of legitimately trying to explore what created these conditions in the first place, these movies pander to the idea all these people are is scum (particularly, as Bilge points out, if they’re minorities), and we should just blow them away.
If that makes me a “pussy”, then so be it.
Yep, you’re a pussy.
Seriously, if someone messed with YOUR stuff, hurt YOUR family, you wouldn’t want to rip them apart in the most vicious and violent way imaginable?
There is a particularly interesting piece in today’s LA Times, where the filmmakers said they didn’t have any real politics going in to the making of the film, but understand that it touched a nerve. It is one of the top 5 grossing films in the UK of last year so clearly it resonated on some level….
Re George Prager’s comment:
Haven’t seen DEATH WISH II. I guess I should check it out. I’m a fan of a lot of Bronson’s 70s stuff,
It has the Jimmy Page score, lots of L.A.-in-1981 footage and one memorable dialogue exchange–
BRONSON: Don you believe in Jesus?
MURDEROUS PUNK: Yes.
BRONSON: Well, you’re about to meet him.
[Bronson shoots punk dead]
Greatest audience reaction I ever saw was at the end of Lethal Weapon 2 when a guy sitting a couple of rows in front of me stood up as Danny Glover aimed his six shooter at Joss Ackland and shouted “Blow his fucking head off!!!!” To which the audience loudly cheered. Danny then blew Joss’s head off and the audience cheered again.
Great stuff.
“Saw the movie, thought it was slickly made but pretty derivative and lacking much of an emotional current. Also, that Pauline Kael line about Straw Dogs being a fascistic work of art? It’s true here, and in spades.”
I thoroughly enjoyed it, but it would be entirely without interest or distinction without Caine’s participation – and yes it may be the most derivative movie I’ve ever seen. It also heartily and unambiguously endorses his characters’s actions – he almost literally brings springtime to the world. I don’t really have a problem with that, it’s only a movie, but the ending of DEATH WISH was actually somewhat nuanced compared to this. The last shot was Bronson grinning and pointing his finger like a gun right into the camera and at the audience – saying that was fun, wasn’t it? but Charlie’s coming after you if you don’t stay on the straight and narrow.
>but forgive those of us who expect a bit more from Michael Caine.
Like The Swarm? (sorry, couldn’t resist)
Would I want to? Of course the thought would cross my mind – contrary to your opinion, I am human. And yes, a lot of these movies are merely fantasies. But it’s funny about who the targets usually are – all teens and minorities considered “punks” coddled by those pesky liberals. And never mind what would happen if we became a truly vigilante society, what that would really look at.
Also, let me turn this around – are you, or have you ever been, the victim of an unsolved crime? If not, then SHUT THE FUCK UP!
So the murderers and rapists in Death Wish movies should be middle-aged, wealthy Caucasian accountants?
The reduction of an enemy or an opposing-force to a subhuman, faceless “other” is likely a natural human reaction – a psychological adaptation to reconcile our standing as a social animal with the baser fight-or-flight instincts.
For most of us, it will only ever manifest in the tendency to broad-brush ideological opposites – “liberal elites!” “ignorant republicans!” – but get yourself into a real-deal blind rage situation where the objects of your ire can be “codified” and see if less-than-enlightened thoughts creep however-briefly into your mind. Any living human who tells you they’ve NEVER had a “fuckin’ _________s!” moment is either lying or Jesus. “Making people I don’t like go away” is one of the basic, innate fantasies of all of us… whether we want to admit it or not.
At their core, fantasies like Death Wish and Harry Brown are less about politics and more about restoring balance to personal-space: The hero has either worked hard and/or feels/is entitled to a certain “bubble” of their own security, said bubble is violated by outsider actors, outside actors must pay. It’s a matter of realistic plotting that the “heroes” in such stories tend to be members of whatever the social-majority is, since THEY’LL be the ones with bubbles to violate in the first place.
Gene Hackman should come out of retirement to make a vigilante film where he beats up pedistrians who hisitate entering a photo and shots those who laugh outloud in public.
The distinction is that in legit revenge movies (Get Carter and the like), vengeance is taken out on those who committed the offense and their affiliates. In movies like Death Wish, it’s taken out on an entire class of society. I don’t have a problem with that being depicted in a film per se, but I’m much more interested in the films that depict its larger consequences.
It boggles the mind that after 100 years of cinema and thousands of years of theater, drama, what-have-you, milquetoast pussy critics still complain about “fascism” or get uncomfortable about seeing violence depicted.
fence posts
Movies that feel like they have to make a statement about the consequences of pursuing vigilante justice seem to assume they’re addressing a problem that actually exists. As if there’s a growing trend of upper class white people buying guns and descending on the inner city looking for punks to blow away. It’s just not a thing. Vigilante movies are fantasy movies, no different than Batman, or The Punisher, and they offer the same sort of power fantasy.
That’s not a criticism. Movies have been about offering socially unacceptable vicarious thrills since The Great Train Robbery. Why some people still seem to want to make their heart bleed about it is beyond me.
Besides that, I think what we should really be taking away from the urban vigilante genre is the fine example they set for racial integration. Nowhere to be found in the entire Death Wish canon is a street gang that didn’t include at least one white guy, one black guy and a Latino. If only real life scumbags were as open-minded racially, street crime would soon trickle to a halt as they realized that deep down inside we’re all brothers under the skin.
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