When we think Caine we think big. We think Hollywood, swinging sixties, Langans Brassiere, Brazilian models. We think National Health glasses, monster cigars, bad impressions and misquoted dialogue. We think about the 100-plus movies he’s made and the fact that even in the turkeys he is endlessly watchable. In “Jaws 4” he actually lands a plane on the water; who else could do that and walk away with his dignity intact? “I have never seen it but by all accounts it is terrible” he said. “However I have seen the house that it built and it is terrific.”

Mercenary? He’s been called that, but Caine never made any bones about his paycheques: “First of all, I choose the great roles, and if none of these come, I choose the mediocre ones, and if they don’t come, I choose the ones that pay the rent.” Caine has been desperately poor and his work ethic is pure old school working class. He never wants to go back, but he nails his cockney credentials firmly to his chest.

His dogged determination to break into Britain’s acting elite in the 60s and his controversial observations on the class system trail-blazed the way for other working class actors to hang onto their accents and gradually chip away at the establishment. Without Caine how far would Bob Hoskins, Gary Oldman and Ray Winstone have progressed in their careers? Would Nick Love and Danny Dyer even be making movies today?

Dyer, in many ways the modern day successor to Caine, is routinely crucified in the British media. He bears the brunt of the systematic dismantling of the white working class by the press and television. To many, he embodies the 00s repulsion at the “chav” phenomenon, the shameless hate filled discrimination levelled at working class kids from London to Glasgow and everywhere in between.

Fuelled by the Internet and the middle class media, an entire generation are now branded uneducated worthless thugs. If such blatant abuse were directed at the African Caribbean community today, the fallout would be monumental. Of course, a large amount of the damage is self-inflicted, but the cold hard fact is that the many working class youth of today have less chance of social mobility through education and work than in Caine’s time, all this under a decade of Labour government.

So can a 76-year-old movie star, a multi-millionaire, a knight of the realm and a former tax exile still be relevant to the working class of today?

An astonishing gang initiation captured on mobile phone smashes “Harry Brown” into “Broken Britain.” It’s a brutal crack rush of a sequence, but it contrasts perfectly with Caine’s introspective performance. Our introduction to Harry could have come from an Alan Bennett play as lonely old pensioner considers life without his sick wife. The dignity in which Harry performs the most mundane of tasks makes us hate the “yoots” on his South London housing estate even more.

New director Daniel Barber bombards his audience with relentless images of a skag-sodden London. Syringes, kickings, stabbings, piss and decay surround ex marine Harry as he tries to pick his way through the debris unmolested. Barber has the Lynchian knack for making the inanimate sinister. An underpass pulsates with inaudible terrors; smoke creeps and clambers through the hallway of Harry’s friend Len, a stark reminder of the estate’s problems, ephemeral and insidious.

When Harry’s wife dies and Len is brutally murdered the look of utter despair on Caine’s face is heart wrenching. Remember, this is Jack Carter. It’s like seeing your dad cry for the first time-unexpected and uncomfortable. When Harry is mugged, his Marine training kicks in and a bloody trail of revenge is unleashed upon Len’s murderers.

What is most shocking about “Harry Brown” is not the level of violence but the hateful dialogue spewed by the young gang members. Chillingly accurate, it comes from a place beyond misogyny and a million absent fathers. Gang leader Noel and his henchman Carl are particularly spiteful in their delivery when grilled by police. Their dripping contempt for authority renders the detectives completely impotent.

“Harry Brown” is wish-fulfilment on a grand scale, a Daily Mail fantasy. Caine is imperious throughout. He is our Eastwood and “Harry Brown” should have been his “Gran Torino.” It comes close on numerous occasions and we even get a new entry into Caine’s classic lines (you’ll know it when you hear it), plus the soundtrack is grindingly relentless. But ultimately, Caine is let down by the ludicrous finale as Barber struggles to hold onto the reins, all the more disappointing considering the highly effective and measured first act.

Is Michael Caine still relevant to the working class? If Michael Caine really is Harry Brown, that means wiping out the very people he has championed over the years in your latest film. On the surface, not a great move. But more than ever in this world of Neets, hoodies and gang members we need Michael Caine to show that bloody hard work and professionalism can lift you out of poverty and obscurity. You needn’t be a movie star, but you could be a doctor, a lawyer, or a journalist. By his very presence in “Harry Brown,” Caine gets everyone talking about the class war that still rages in Britain.

To paraphrase Caine in “Get Carter” – “I’d say that’s pretty relevant.”

Carter inhabits an England gripped by the fall out from the 60s. Weed and acid have been replaced by heroin and cocaine, free love by pornography. Celebrity gangsters like the Krays and the Richardsons have had their veneer of glamour peeled back to reveal the concrete-encased nastiness lurking beneath the David Bailey photographs. Police corruption is rife, and the only time the law is encountered is when Carter uses it for his own dark means.

This world is littered with broken relationships and adultery. Nearly every character is embroiled in a sordid affair; the destruction of the family unit is rife in “Get Carter,” with Carter as complicit as the most despicable of his enemies.

In fact, Carter is far more ruthless than any of the local gangsters he comes up against, and far more inventive. His revenge is served hot, cold, and vicious, a shockingly calculated annihilation that leaves no doubt in the mind as to how atrocious Carter truly is.

Yet as stated before, he is capable of a stunted affection. He cries (albeit privately) upon a devastating revelation and perhaps this lapse of his warped masculinity is what really sends him on his final course of terrifying action, with the dreadful outcome inevitable and necessary.