Judging by the recent Hollywood remakes, the late 1960s and early 1970s are supposed to be the last golden era of moviemaking. However, few films made in that period have the honour of being remade not once but twice. One of them is Get Carter, a 1971 British thriller directed by Mike Hodges. Only a year after its premiere it was remade as the blaxploitation thriller Hit Man, and in 2000 it was remade again, this time under the original title. The latest version was viewed as a disappointment, but it was also good incentive for the younger generation of viewers to be introduced to the 1971 original, now regarded as one of the best British films of all time.
The plot of the film is based on Jack's Return Home, a novel by Ted Lewis. The protagonist is Jack Carter (played by Michael Caine), a professional assassin employed by a powerful London gang. His brother Frank died in a traffic accident and he, despite his bosses' wishes, travels to his hometown of Newcastle to attend the funeral. After making casual inquiries about the details of Frank's death, Jack's instinct and experience tell him that some kind of foul play was involved. But the most telling of all is the fact that Jack's old acquaintances from the local crime scene – gang lord Cyril Kinnear (played by John Osborne) and his enforcer Eric Paice (played by Ian Hendry) – want him out of Newcastle as soon as possible. Carter is now determined to settle this matter and he will use his skills and reputation as a ruthless killer to find out who killed his brother and why. But even the years spent in the underworld couldn't prepare him for the awful truth, and once he discovers why Frank was killed, Carter will exact terrible revenge on all those he finds responsible.
Like many great movies, Get Carter was initially rejected by critics and public alike. However, it enjoyed cult status among a small but dedicated group of filmophiles and its reputation grew through the years until most critics and film scholars finally recognised it as one of the best gangster films of all time. It owes most of its late success to the talent of its screenwriter and director Mike Hodges. Get Carter was Hodges' first feature film, but it nevertheless looks like a film made by a much more experienced film artist with an already established personal style. Because of that, Get Carter looks like a film that has aged very well and could be viewed even by newer generations, yet it shows the distinctive markings of the age in which it was made.
The most important thing that distinguishes Get Carter from various other gangster films is its style. Hodges enriched the simple revenge story with an extremely naturalistic and bleak portrayal of the underworld. To achieve it, he used the city of Newcastle as the perfect setting for the story and shot almost the entire movie on location, thus creating a downbeat atmosphere from beginning to end. Many scenes in the film are almost documentary-like and they portray a bleak, industrial city where women wear mini-skirts and dance to swinging 60s tunes, but the run-down decaying houses, rampant alcoholism and popularity of betting shops indicate a living standard closer to the Dickensian era than the Beatles era. In this cesspool of poverty and decay, it is natural for people to seek any way out – men through crime, women through prostitution. People like Carter are a natural product of such an environment, and by implicitly stating that, Get Carter is as powerful a social study as it is a gangster film.
However, most people today associate Get Carter with its protagonist, brilliantly portrayed by the great British actor Michael Caine in the prime of his career. Many of them tend to think that Get Carter is Caine's best film. Here Caine, who had built his reputation by playing charming rogues, plays someone who could hardly be viewed as anything short of a villain even in our cynical times. His Carter is an efficient killing machine and, considering the villains he has to cope with, we are supposed to root for him, but Caine works very hard to remind us of Carter's true nature and moral alignment. We might sympathise with his one-man crusade to avenge his family, but while doing this, Carter not only uses often unpleasant forms of violence, but also allows innocent people to get hurt. Caine achieves this effect through good acting technique – Carter hardly displays any emotion in almost any situation; whether he investigates, seduces women or fights for his life, he always has the same expressionless face. But in a few pivotal moments, including the powerful ending, he allows hidden emotions and his true nature to come out, making those scenes powerful.
The rest of the cast is also very good, although nobody could really compete with Caine, whose character appears in almost every scene of the film. Among them the most effective is the most unusual casting choice of all – John Osborne, the great British playwright and author of Look Back in Anger, who appears in the chillingly impressive role of a soft-spoken but sinister gang boss. Rosemarie Dunham is also good as a bored forty-something woman who gets exploited by Carter, while the appearance of Britt Ekland, the only actress who could be viewed as a star, is probably best remembered for the steamy phone sex scene. The good acting is accompanied by very good cinematography by Wolfgang Suschitzky, which perfectly captured the bleak atmosphere of Newcastle. This atmosphere is accompanied by an excellent musical score by Roy Budd which is ironic, melancholic and sinister all at the same time. Carter's theme is simple but effective and, unlike those used in many 1970s movies, it could be used even today.
Of course, there are those among today's viewers who might think of Get Carter as too bleak, too slow and too boring to be considered a masterpiece. For them, "cool" modern movies like Snatch and Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels are much better embodiments of the British gangster film. But, as a simple yet powerful depiction of the way the underworld operates in real life, Get Carter is a great film that truly got it right.
RATING: 9/10 (++++)
(Note: The text in its original form was posted in Usenet newsgroup rec.arts.movies.reviews on February 15th 2002)
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Movie URL: https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/1485-get-carter?language=en-US
Critic: AAA
