THERE have been too many Death Wish movies for us not be wary about another vigilante film.

The attractions of taking justice into your own hands and meeting thuggish violence head-on are self-evident but the dangers of tackling morally complex issues such as drugs, gang crime and youth alienation and adopting a broad-brush approach are clear – you end up with a Michael Winner film. After all, even Jodie Foster's Death Wish retread The Brave One failed to find any higher moral ground.

So all praise to first-time director Daniel Barber for confronting the most burning of contemporary issues without flinching – and delivering a compelling drama to boot.

Michael Caine stars in the title role as a bitter ex-soldier living in the humbling poverty of old age in a run-down inner-city block of flats, surrounded by the threadbare social fabric of a world that produces disenchanted Asbo-wielding youngsters.

Harry's best pal takes a stance against the outrages but is butchered for his troubles.

With the police powerless to bring the perpetrators to justice, Harry decides to take the law into his own hand.

Emily Mortimer as a caring copper gives the film its moral compass and Derby actor Jack O'Connell makes an impression as one of the estate youths.

But it's Caine who haunts the movie with a wonderfully pitched performance of a man left horrified by the decaying state of the world around him.

In the most telling scene, Harry finds himself in a drug dealer's den face to face for the first time with the underworld that inhabits the streets he calls home. But there's no Charles Bronson-style gleeful blood-letting here, just a painful realisation of how low humanity can sink.

Somehow, with Caine in such virtuoso form and Barber on top of his incendiary material, Harry Brown treads the moral tightrope with assurance.

The result is a low-budget film with high aims that achieves for modern Britain what Gran Torino did for contemporary America.