Get Carter

Get Carter is a rough tough no nonsense British gangster flick.

Michael Caine plays Jack Carter who seems to have been in London so long. He has lost all traces of his Geordie accent.

Carter travels back to Newcastle on the train to attend his brother Frank's supposedly accidental death. Carter is not convinced that his death was an accident and makes a few enquiries.

Carter also plans to go to South America with his mistress and asks his niece Doreen to join him there. When some henchmen arrive late at night trying to force Carter to get the next train back to London. It confirms that his brother's death was murder.

Carter's search takes him to an underworld gangster called Kinnear who seemed to have coerced Doreen to take part in a pornographic film. Carter's brother found out about it. It also leaves Carter distraught as it is alleged that he might be Doreen's real father.

Michael Caine has always said that he was never happy with the portrayal of British gangster in movies. They are shown to be stupid or funny when they are actually brutal.

He shows Jack Carter brooding with a sense of quiet menace. Almost amoral with businesslike violence and he's always ready for an opportunity for some casual sex.

Director Mike Hodges has a documentary type setting but has gone for a hard boiled detective approach as Carter investigates. The story does get complex as it deals with people plotting against each other and betrayal.

Carter's mistress is the girlfriend of his London crime boss. The movie is set in a working class part of Newcastle which itself is going through change. There is a character called Brumby who is involved in the renewal of the city.

Hodges also adds some nice lurid touches to the grittiness. When Carter telephones his mistress in London from Newcastle for some phone sex. The landlady of the boarding house rocks back and fro in her rocking chair as she listens on. There is also some humour. When Brumby suddenly disappears and the police arrive. One of the architects that Brumby had a meeting with notes that they are unlikely to be paid.

Get Carter was a movie that was always shown on television late at night usually in an edited version. It was only from the 1990s onwards it started to acquire a cult reputation. It was cited as an influence by American directors such as Quentin Tarantino and Steven Soderbergh.

Jack Carter, the reserved London gangster, travels north to Newcastle, his home town, to find the cause of his brother's death. He's warned by his bosses not to go, but refuses to obey them. We, and he, discover the reasons for the warning, which are intertwined with the details of his brother's fate, and watch Carter's quest for revenge reach its logical conclusion. The underworld life sets a kitschy vision of glamour - music-box decanter sets, flashy bespoke suits, and garishly decorated villas - against the grotty reality of arcade slot machines, pornographic 8mm films, and the claustrophobic grubbiness of Newcastle's industrial tenements. Carter, who prides himself on a style of detached shrewdness, navigates both worlds, until he discovers that they're intertwined, sickeningly. The corruption which provides him his living has tainted his own family. I think the centre of the film is the brilliant moment when Carter sits in bed in the flickering light of a projector, discovering the truth about his world. He weeps, silently, knowing what he must now do. But vengeance is all he knows, and it consumes him.

This story captures with great subtlety the coarse truths about poverty, and crime, which are as true today in Canada and the US as they were forty years ago in England. There's no heroism, no loyalty, no glamour. We feel a kind of sorrowful revulsion at the squalid reality of Carter's world, even as we fear the intensity of his quest for his brother's killers. And we realise we've seen a perfect film of its kind - exceptionally skillful acting, cinematography and editing, bringing to life a taut script. Never again will we fall for the false romanticism of crime.

This film has a stunning Michael Caine play cold-blooded gangster Jack Carter on a quest for vengeance. Carter never wavers, he never strays from his path, he is like a surgical instrument that cuts down everything in his way with clinical precision without passion or mercy. If the Terminator were a human character, he would be Carter. Alfred he is not (hint: that's a Batman reference) . One of the best British crime flicks ever. 8 stars out of 10.

In case you're interested in more underrated masterpieces, here's some of my favorites:

imdb.com/list/ls070242495

Jack Carter is not someone you'd usually want to take home to your mother. He's a career criminal, a gangster in London whose brother was in Newcastle (his hometown) when he found out that he died under mysterious circumstances. Already we're on his side, since it was obviously not a typical drunk-driving accident that caused Frank Carter's death, and we want to see revenge and/or justice. But Jack Carter, that man with a near-permanent dour look on his face and a tendency to get violent, isn't a typical protagonist. He's something of an anti-hero, a nasty one at that, who is a perpetual womanizer (in one oddly hot scene he talks with a direct tone on the phone with a gangster's moll to take off her clothes and masturbate), and will hurt anyone he needs to, sometimes to extreme lengths, to get what he needs to know.

Certainly he's surrounded in a murky enough criminal environment. The Newcastle of 'Get Carter' is a place with sleazy gangsters betting big bucks and nightclubs with of-the-period music, and women running hotels with weathered looks on their faces. It's here that Carter goes on his investigation, like a hard-boiled detective without mercy. And as he digs deeper into what is at the heart of the mystery- that Frank Carter wasn't a saint, but got duped by the criminal elements and in a pornographic film that brings Jack to tears of rage- it becomes clear he'll have to knock a few heads, and shoot when he must... which is a lot.

Carter might be more unlikable if not for the star in the role. Michael Caine has a look to him in this film that recalls Alain Delon in the Jean-Pierre Melville pictures, specifically Le Samourai. Nothing can really flinch this guy, unless it's something that he actually cares about. But Caine gives humanity to a character that is on the move, almost always, and has to be on his toes when around unsavory characters. I loved seeing how Caine can just be great at looking around a room or a situation or looking over a person, and how when he gets angry, boy you better get out (even if, or sometimes especially because, you're a woman not dishing on what needs to be told). Caine helps a film that needs that star quality- other actors like John Osbourne as the Big Gangster Kinnear and Ian Hendry as Eric do well enough if only good performances- and where the film digs into some subversive, dark terrain, we have to keep watching it to see how Caine can pull it off.

Another perk for Hodges is how he deals with the action. Often his film will feel a little slow-going (never too boring, but of a time period, the 70's, when a story could take a little more time in establishing mood), but when action and violence come up it's genuinely shocking and thrilling. We expect to get some satisfaction seeing Carter getting his payback at the criminals, but here there's a dastardly twist as to how just rotten Carter can be with these figures. He goes to their level, and Hodges lets us go along for the wicked neo-noir ride. Some may find it too dark, or just a little too unrelentingly bleak with what Carter finds and how he gets his revenge. But there's the bittersweet part to it as well, especially in the last act, that makes it worthwhile.

GET CARTER is the anti-Hollywood gangster movie, a film which strips away the glitz and glamour one usually associates with the genre to deliver one of the grimmest-looking movies ever. The north eastern locations are wonderfully used with this being a very visual movie that really brings out the grubby dirtiness of an industrial wasteland.

The characters, too, are grim. Michael Caine is the epitome of the anti-hero, a man just as cold, violent, and ruthless as those he pursues, except the viewer happens to be tagging along with him on his odyssey of revenge. The film's narrative has a mystery storyline as Caine attempts to uncover the circumstances surrounding his brother's death, and the supporting cast - including a memorable Ian Hendry - is exemplary.

Being a film from the 1970s, the sex and violence is ramped up, particularly the former in an arresting phone sex scene with Britt Ekland. Caine is on top form, delivering what I believe to be his most frightening performance, and the script offers up some real corkers in terms of the dialogue. In fact, GET CARTER is a film which it's very difficult to criticise; everything about it gels together perfectly, and it's a real classic for a reason. Mike Hodges should be proud of his accomplishments here.