The Reckoning

A real taste of 70s Britain here, social injustice, poverty, and social climbing all brought together with the Irish Liverpool way, Get Carter would be a reference but in a way this brilliant movie is different, yes it is a revenge Northern movie but it has so much more to offer, if you grew up in an Irish household in England then you would really relate to some of this movie.Try it out you won't be disappointed I give this 9/10

50 years ago anti-heroes sold movies, though thankfully not this one. Audiences were delighted that there was no longer a required convention for villains to get caught, and directors exploited the new freedom to excess. This is a prime example of that excess. Our hero is a schizophrenic, one moment delighting in the rich mans trappings - flash car, large property in fashionable Surrey, wife with all the social graces, conventional senior management position in solid London based corporation, the next behaving like a football hooligan when he rediscovers his roots. His treatment of females is so despicable I'm not surprised that distributors wouldn't touch this film.

At the end I wished that I was back in the fifties and that he was the one due the reckoning. No such luck.

The film has some merit for the acting and camerawork but as entertainment it just left a nasty taste in the mouth.

Move over, Michael Caine! Your "Get Carter" might very well be acclaimed around the world and listed as one of the most virulent British cult thrillers ever made, but this obscure and undiscovered (and, at one point, even considered lost) drama/thriller with very reminiscent themes predates your film with nearly two years AND it's a lot more ambitious in terms of character study and social criticism!

Okay, so now that's off my chest… Don't get me wrong, I don't have anything against Michael Caine or "Get Carter". Quite the contrary, in fact, but I just want to plea for "The Reckoning" to become more known and loved amongst cult fanatics worldwide! What this puppy needs is a proper and fancy DVD-release, as I'm 200% sure it will appeal to a lot of cult collectors. The film really has it all: an unbelievable intense tour-de-force performance by Nicol Williamson, a grim & gritty contemporary late 60's/early 70's atmosphere, few but exhilarating action sequences and numerous of mind-boggling dialogs. Michael Marler is a successful businessman in London, but in spite of all his power and money he is bitter (especially in his marriage with the beautiful Rosemary), merciless (especially in his job as a sales executive) and aggressive (especially behind the wheel of his car). He is frustrated because he grew up as an oppressed Irishman in the intolerant city of Liverpool and still doesn't manage to put this tough period behind him. Michael returns to Liverpool to see his dying father, but arrives too late. When he learns that his father's death was actually the result of a cowardly assault by young British thugs, his outrageous Irish temper comes to the surface again. But Michael's retro-metamorphosis also has severe consequences when he's back in London. "The Reckoning" is a giant spitfire of highlights, one sequence even more powerful and intense than the next. Unforgettable moments include a Liverpool wrestling match and a party full of vainglorious guests at the Marler residence. And just when you think "The Reckoning" can't get anymore cooler, just wait until you witness the very last sequence. Mr. Marler is a truly unique persona, to say the least. The more employees he intimidates and he more women he seduces, the more you will cheer for him. Williamson, most known for supportive roles and stage plays, gives one of the most underrated performances in cinema history.

I disagree with the first reviewer - this is a bravura performance by Nicol Williamson and much better than 'Get Carter'. As an indication of how much I respected this film, my father was in the film industry in London at the time and I was in Manchester as a student. I saw the film poorly advertised in a small cinema and felt it was wholly spoiled by the poor performance of the film's marketing and distributors. So much so that on leaving the cinema I telephoned my father at once from a call box and told him how highly I rated it. He may have been startled to hear from me as I was the typical uncommunicative student, never writing home.

The film not only has Williamson but also Rachel Roberts giving a good performance, and the ensemble cast does some fine work - there is a brilliant mocking of life in a Virginia Water type of suburbia where all have quality cars in their drives and trite conversation over canapés. It is critical in its style of the mass demolition of the Liverpool slums and is almost elegiac at what is lost thereby, much in the same way as was The Likely Lads TV series. 'Get Carter' is more vulgar, with Michael Caine producing shotguns and leaving bodies about. Williamson is much more earthy - there is a brutal kicking in the film which really makes you wince.

It's also, in its way, a tribute to a kind of Brendan Behan Irishness that was being squeezed out of Britain's cities - the hard-working, hard-living heavy-drinking workers who actually built things with their muscles as opposed to the prissy types who never dirtied their hands. This is why the Williamson character is such an outcast in his smooth London corporate job (in the heart of a City of London that would over the next 15 years also be transformed) but nonetheless effective in his own rough and ready blunt way.

One superb moment is at the end of the film when Williamson driving his Jaguar at breakneck speed has jumped a Stop sign at a roadworks and is racing down a single track sure that oncoming traffic must be starting his way shortly. He just gets away with it, at the expense of a few traffic cones and similar, and one of those in the car says words to the effect "If you can get away with that, you can get away with anything". As he does (I won't spoil the plot by saying more). This is not a sanitized look at Liverpool but a cold stare. Jack Gold made a great film here and it deserved better of its distributors who did not have faith in the product.

I am in complete agreement with dan-filson-928-874987: THE RECKONING (which could almost be called a lost film now)is a powerful drama with a bravura performance by Nicol Williamson at its heart. Williamson specialised in being hard to like: he relished the negative attributes of every character he played. His performances tend to be quite broad, but the complete absence of sentimentality keeps them fresh. In THE RECKONING director Jack Gold keeps theatricality at bay. The powerful ending described by dan-filson-928-874987 is a fresh memory for me even after 40 years. Yes, there are similarities to GET CARTER: but CARTER is a genre picture, and THE RECKONING is a character drama. Both films are highly accomplished, but comparing them doesn't really shed much light on either, in my opinion. Time for Columbia or the BFI to get hold of a master and issue this on DVD.