The once uneventful world of Harry Brown, a retired ex-Royal Marine living in present-day South London, is slowly being turned on its head. He suffers from emphysema, his wife lies dying in hospital, and his lifelong friend Leonard is being terrorised by the hooligans of the council estate. Walking home after an evening of drinking away his sorrows, a petty criminal threatens to rob him. In a drunken daze, Harry turns the knife on its owner – but rather than prompting guilt, the experience gives birth to the need for further retribution. With the police appearing indecisive and powerless, Harry decides to clean up the streets himself, and take revenge for the wrongs done to his loved ones.

Daniel Barber’s dark debut film is as provocative as it is intense, and exhibits some of the finest U.K. actors working today. Martin Ruhe’s cinematography gives it a distinctive, haunting tone, quite unlike anything else in British cinema. Most of all, Harry Brown is a reminder of why Michael Caine is such a screen icon: his mesmerising anti-hero gives a new slant on some of the most topical issues of the day. The vigilante genre that made him famous, and modernised 70s cinema, gets a brilliant contemporary revamp in one of the best British films of the decade.