Harry Brown (Caine) is a dapper 76-year-old ex-marine condemned to a humdrum life on a bleak south London estate as his wife withers away with cancer.

The only bright spot in a day dulled by routine is a game of chess over a pint with his best buddy Leonard (Bradley), a fellow pensioner petrified by the feral thugs who roam the estate's walkways.

Harry's wife dies...but it is the brutal stabbing of Len in a dank underpass by a gang of jeering hoodies that sets the widower on a path of Sanatogen-fuelled retribution.

Drawing on his experiences in Northern Ireland during the troubles, he surprises himself by turning a knife back on a drugged-up mugger and then turning over a crack den.

During the ruck a street armourer with a worrying resemblance to Liam Gallagher is taken out and his buddy despatched by Caine's old pro who admonishes him for not cleaning his gun properly.

Unsurprisingly, all this has not gone unnoticed by the police in the compassionate form of Mortimer's detective chief inspector but Harry is well above suspicion...until his trail of vengeance leads to Len's killers.

While not as morally facile as Charles Bronson in Death Wish, this isn't massively different, the drama lifted by first-class performances and a mood of vicious threat beautifully conveyed by Martin Ruhe's imaginative camera-work.

The profanity-spitting yobs never break out of one dimension - there's no context for their gloating nihilism - and the simply-staged plot swings in a predictable direction even if there is quite a nicely-judged twist at the end.

Caine - now less Get Carter than get me a comfy chair - is reliably excellent. Coming from a similar background and - you suspect - swearing by the same er, robust values as Harry, he's never less than watchable and lifts what threatens to be yet another derivative revenge yarn into something better.

It's not sophisticated - more knackered Cortina than Gran Torino but does give Caine the chance to play "Dirty" Harry for the jigsaws and zimmer brigade.

Tim Evans