Samuel Goldwyn Aquires Caine's 'Harry Brown'

Monday

16Nov2009

Samuel Goldwyn Aquires Caine's 'Harry Brown'

Monday, November 16, 2009 at 2:36AM

With Clint Eastwood's Gran Torino and Liam Neeson's Taken raking in the dough in the last 12 months, Samuel Goldwyn Films is hoping that trend continues for a few more months. The company has purchased the Michael Caine-as-a-trigger-happy-old-bastard flick, Harry Brown, and will release it in the US next year.

Caine plays a retired British Marine in the film, who takes the law into his own hands after his best friend is murdered. Vowing to clean up the neighborhood, Brown unleashes his inner Charles Bronson and begins a path of destruction, punk.

We saw the trailer earlier this year, and it looks like it belongs in that category, even though to be as good as Gran Torino or as populist and entertaining as Taken is going to be hard to reproduce.

The film debuted in Toronto, had its British premiere last week, and will roll into over 300 theaters in the UK next weekend. That's another way this is similar to Taken. That film made a ton of money in Europe - and around the world, actually - before it ever hit American soil. It was already very profitable before it collected well over $100 million in America.

Can Michael Caine do that? Well, I doubt it. But he does have a certain cachet with younger audiences thanks to his work in the Batman films, so it's possible this could do OK when it finally arrives.

Colin Boyd |

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