Starring Michael Caine and Emily Mortimer.

I’m sure I read somewhere that this was a Michael Caine Gangster movie. It isn’t. It’s MC playing a ‘Pensioner as Vigilante’ movie and it’s earnest, well observed in places but, ultimately, not great.

MC plays the eponymous hero, an ex-marine, recently widowed and a friend to Leonard. They play chess in the local pub. Leonard is being terrorized by the local hoodies who have made the local underpass a no-go area and deal drugs etc. Leonard tries to get Harry to help him deal with the problem but Harry suggests he try the police instead. Leonard bitterly remarks that he has but they don’t care and so he is going to take matters into his own hands. Leonard, surprise, is killed after he attacks the oiks with a bayonet.

This pushes Harry over the edge and he embarks on a wave of drug dealer carnage that ends in a riot on the sink estate where it all takes place.

Emily Mortimer is the police DI assigned to find out who killed Len. She quickly surmises that Harry is responsible for all the subsequent carnage but will her superiors believe her? Of course not! That’s why they are superiors.

I wanted to like this movie but it’s, frankly, not terribly good. I usually like EM but she is woefully miscast here. The plot is clunky and tired. The music is horribly overblown.

It could have been so much better. It has moments but not enough to forgive the misses.