Actor Caine on Broken Britain
Actor Caine on Broken Britain
Posted by
Petes1234567
234 days ago
THE white-haired old gent straightened his cardigan, settled into his settee and turned down the volume on the television.
“A bit of a tough day,” he said with a friendly smile.
Moments earlier, gun in hand, he had been beating a teenage hoodie to a pulp.
On a film set, you understand. Although the violence which spawned Sir Michael Caine’s latest movie, Harry Brown, is genuine enough.
Against a backdrop of a Broken Britain plagued with teenage knife deaths and a growing gun culture, Michael plays an ex-Marine pensioner living alone in an inner-city estate after the death of his wife.
When his only friend is murdered by the drug-dealing young gangsters who terrorise the concrete jungle, Harry Brown turns vigilante to wipe them out... one by one.
“It’s a tough movie,” he said, “but it’s about a very tough environment.”
Michael, 76, has been taking it easy of late. But he jumped at the chance to make a film which highlights one of the most damaging issues of our age — the growth in youth violence.
He said: “I was at the Elephant and Castle, where I come from, and there are these terrible flats. They are being pulled down now but people have been living in them for years. They are like animal cages.
“I suppose if you house people like animals they turn into animals.”
The Elephant has changed greatly since Michael was a boy.
He said: “I talked to the local kids a lot during filming.
“For them, I was one of them, if you see what I mean. They talked to me on an equal basis. There is potential in all of them, but they never got the chance.
“And, of course, what you have now which you didn’t have when I was young is drugs. You had alcoholism, people getting p****d, but you never had the drugs and that is a massive problem.
“We were shooting in Hackney and someone local came up to me and said, ‘Welcome to Crackney!’
“It was a gentler time when I was young. There were vicious gangsters but they were professional gangsters. They chose who they hit and what they robbed.
“A bit of a tough day,” he said with a friendly smile.
Moments earlier, gun in hand, he had been beating a teenage hoodie to a pulp.
On a film set, you understand. Although the violence which spawned Sir Michael Caine’s latest movie, Harry Brown, is genuine enough.
Against a backdrop of a Broken Britain plagued with teenage knife deaths and a growing gun culture, Michael plays an ex-Marine pensioner living alone in an inner-city estate after the death of his wife.
When his only friend is murdered by the drug-dealing young gangsters who terrorise the concrete jungle, Harry Brown turns vigilante to wipe them out... one by one.
“It’s a tough movie,” he said, “but it’s about a very tough environment.”
Michael, 76, has been taking it easy of late. But he jumped at the chance to make a film which highlights one of the most damaging issues of our age — the growth in youth violence.
He said: “I was at the Elephant and Castle, where I come from, and there are these terrible flats. They are being pulled down now but people have been living in them for years. They are like animal cages.
“I suppose if you house people like animals they turn into animals.”
The Elephant has changed greatly since Michael was a boy.
He said: “I talked to the local kids a lot during filming.
“For them, I was one of them, if you see what I mean. They talked to me on an equal basis. There is potential in all of them, but they never got the chance.
“And, of course, what you have now which you didn’t have when I was young is drugs. You had alcoholism, people getting p****d, but you never had the drugs and that is a massive problem.
“We were shooting in Hackney and someone local came up to me and said, ‘Welcome to Crackney!’
“It was a gentler time when I was young. There were vicious gangsters but they were professional gangsters. They chose who they hit and what they robbed.
6
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