Get Carter

Rating:
Summary: Not exactly an up with people experience
Review: I saw this while I was in Army over in Korea. Everybody in the audience was kind of subdued when it was over. Michael Caine does a terrific job as a small time tough bent on revenge. Everybody doublecrosses everybody. The anti-gun crowd would do well to ponder Caine's character's expertise with a switchblade.

Rating:
Summary: British crime thriller at it's very best.
Review: Get Carter is the British Gangland film at it's very best. Based on Ted Lewis' "Jack's Return Home" It tells the violent story of Jack Carter - a tough Enforcer who works for the Fletcher Brothers. Having found out that his brother has died under strange circumstances, Carter travels north to his home city of Newcastle to find out what happened. But the local underworld are going to make sure that Carter never knows the truth. Filmed in 1971 by Mike Hodges, this is a tough and uncompromising look into a world that very few people know of. A world where people live on the peripheries of violence and respectability. By Alan Gerrard. END

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Summary: I'm Excited to get "Get Carter" on DVD!
Review: It's great news to finally be able to get "Get Carter" on DVD. Get Carter is an incredible film, one of the best of 1970's, that stars Michael Caine as "Carter" in probably his greatest performance, and is directed by Mike Hodges, which is his greatest film as well. This film may be one of the more brutally violent films that has ever been made, even by today's standards, which is amazing considering that it was made 30 years ago. It's about a mob henchman that goes on a quest for revenge when his brother is killed under suspicious circumstances. On his journey Carter encounters plenty of sex and violence. There are many memorable scenes in this movie including one of the most raw, brutal killing scenes that I have ever scene in which he stabs a former friend whom he suspects betrayed him. This movie is action packed, but not the mindless, loud, explosion-filled action of today's movies. The violence is both shocking and disturbing, however, there's a heavy price to pay. This movie will leave you dazed after finishing viewing. I highly recommend this movie to everyone with even a casual interest in great films, and is a must own for DVD collectors.

Rating:
Summary: The Toughest of the Tough!
Review: GET CARTER is one of Michael Caine's greatest films, probably my personal favorite! With its gritty style and brilliant central performance, this is a stunning crime thriller.

Low-level London gangster Jack Carter (Caine) returns to his childhood home of Newcastle to find out who killed his brother, and why! In a way, Carter becomes a detective, trying to solve this very personal mystery, by any means necessary!

A ruthless professional, Jack Carter is cautious and calculated and never allows himself to get too close to anyone, not even those willing to help him uncover the truth. He dismisses a friend just as casually as he would an enemy! After all, when you're in his line of work, you can't afford to be too emotionally involved.

Then something happens!

While investigating his brother's death, Jack discovers that another relative - someone close - has been dragged down into his underground world. Someone too young, too innocent. For one powerful moment, Jack Carter's wall breaks down, and his emotions explode! The normally calm professional becomes an animalistic killer. Driven by hatred and bent on revenge, Carter kills his victims without prejudice, whether they're guilty or simply in the way!

Michael Caine is magnificent! He purposefully sheds his charming persona and becomes the ultimate antihero in Jack Carter. In any other film, Carter would have been the villain, and an intimidating one. But in GET CARTER, we sympathize with the character because we understand his mission, and because Caine allows us opportunities to witness Carter's human side, rare they might be. Nonetheless, Caine never lets us forget Carter's darkness, and the moment we start to root for him, he snaps us back into the realization that Jack Carter is not a good person. And you can't take your eyes off Caine! GET CARTER is as much a character study as it is a thriller. Kudos to the film's director Mike Hodges for allowing his lead actor to create such a flawed protagonist, without apologies.

Hodges should also be praised for showcasing the city of Newcastle as an important character in the film. There's enough darkness and grit instilled within the streets, pubs, and people to remind Jack Carter that he is unmistakeably home.

As the director, Hodges takes an interesting minimalist approach in terms of the music, cinematography and overall style, but it works perfectly! GET CARTER is a lean, mean masterpiece! And while his cast is uniformly superb, Michael Caine turns this masterpiece into a tour de force by delivering one of his greatest performances!

Rating:
Summary: Great Movie With a Great Performance
Review: Michael Caine plays Jack Carter, a London gang member who specializes in strong arm intimidation. He learns that his younger brother has died in the north of England, in Newcastle, while drunk; maybe a suicide, maybe an accident. Carter, against the wishes of his gang bosses, leaves to find out what happened. He knows his brother never drank. He pokes around, ignores the warnings to lay off from both the Newcastle and London gangs. He figures out who is responsible and, despite murder attempts, starts to take cold-blooded vengeange.

Carter has no remorse. People who help him, people who get in his way, people who try to stop him, all get hurt. Often by Jack Carter; it doesn't make any difference to him. One kid who helps him gets beaten within an inch of his life. Carter is barely sympathetic. He kills a woman with an injection of drugs because she played a part in his brother's youngest daughter being in a porno film making the rounds. But he does it deliberately, for a larger purpose. He's a thug, but cunning, and he doesn't care. One nice touch: he reads Raymond Chandler. On the train ride to Newcastle he's immersed in Farewell, My Lovely.

In the end he succeeds, but pays a price that says irony may be even better than justice.

The look of the movie is grimy and tough. Newcastle is a workingman's town, with pubs that are dirty, featureless council flats, and a lot of concrete. There's no fresh air here, just stale breath and cigarette smoke.

This is one of Caine's great roles. He's utterly believable. A side note, one of the slimiest of the villians, a porn lord, is played by John Osborne, the playwrite who wrote Look Back in Anger.

I can't recommmend this movie enough. Mike Hodges, who directed, also directed Croupier and I'll Sleep When I'm Dead.

Rating:
Summary: Classic British Gangster Film
Review: I was fortunate to have first seen this film on a trip to London at a revival theatre in Leicester Square. I cannot imagine that Quentin Tarantino has not seen this film and has not on some subliminal level not been influenced by it. Everything about this film is great; the acting, the grimy Newcastle locations, the music score. This may be Michael Caine's greatest performance. You find yourself sympathetic to his gangster's quest to ferret out his brother's killer yet are repulsed at his methods in exacting revenge. Everybody I have recommended this film to has loved it (at least those who could stomach the violence) but admitted to me that they had never heard of it. On the DVD commentary track director Mike Hodges states that the U.S. distributor MGM didn't know how to market this highly original film so they double-billed it with "Dirty Dingus Magee".