This month sees the release of Thatcher-fest The Iron Lady, much to the chagrin of David Cameron, and rather than being what we all want it to be – a cross between Robert Downey Jr. in Iron Man and Ted Hughes’ not-quite-as-good-as-Iron-Giant-but-still-pretty-good The Iron Woman – it is, in fact, another boring, by the numbers, Oscar hounding biopic, no different to any that have come before. Sigh, does the biopic genre show that the film industry is running out of ideas?

Back to the gritty, urban milieu of earlier films such as Get Carter, Michael Caine delivers an uncompromising and sympathetic performance in Harry Brown, a dark and violent revenge thriller. But where the performances stand out, some of the politics in the film fare less well. Read on to find out what we thought of Michael Caine blowing off more than just doors.