Get Carter (1971)

Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

Absolutely Fantastic

A waste of 90 minutes of my life

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Get Carter is sometimes described as one of the best British gangster films. This isn't a very accurate statement as Get Cater is the actual very best British Gangster film and one of the best British films of any kind overall. It's typified by a fantastically nasty performance from Michael Caine in the role of Jack Carter, the London based gangster who travels back home to Newcastle to find out who killed his brother. Caine is truly brilliant here in a role that shows how great an actor he is, this is a very amoral central character and Caine never shrinks away from depicting him as a seriously cold individual. Generally speaking, there is a very short supply of truly 'good' characters in this one. Even the most sympathetic people have something shady attached to them.The location is another trump card. The Newcastle of the early 70's makes for a supremely bleak setting. It was a deprived city of run down tenements and dying industries. This feeling of decay and ruin really seeps into the story and makes for a magnificent backdrop for this nihilistic crime story. It shows quite clearly that UK film-makers have too rarely ventured out into the provinces to makes films which is a terrible mistake as the Newcastle setting is quite unique, distinctive and brilliant here.The story-line also is a big plus point. It takes the form of the most unusual of genre combinations, the mystery/crime film. As soon as Carter hits the scene, he causes serious ripples in the waters of the criminal underworld. As he goes about his business we are able to piece more and more parts of the jigsaw together and ultimately learn what it was that went down and why it happened in the first place. Carter is quite an unusual protagonist as we are definitely on his side, given that his antagonists in the criminal network are so awful. But while we will him on, he still commits some horrendous actions including the murder of a woman. But it's the very fact that the film doesn't play easy with you that is one of the reasons that makes this such a satisfying and bold film. To top it all off, it has a truly great theme tune by Roy Budd that captures the feel of the film perfectly. A true all-time classic.

London gangster Jack Carter (Michael Caine) goes to Newcastle for his brother's funeral and investigate his death. He suspects foul-play and dives into the Newcastle underworld. His brother leaves behind his daughter Doreen Carter and mistress Margaret. He tracks down crime boss Cyril Kinnear where he also meets Glenda. Meanwhile his boss Fletchers back in London sends henchmen to Newcastle to Get Carter back. He's having an affair with his other boss Gerald's girlfriend Anna. He is given businessman Brumby's name but Cliff Brumby points the finger at Kinnear. He finds a porno where Doreen is pushed into joining.There are just so many characters coming in and out of the story. It's a bit confusing and muddies up the tension. Many movies of that era don't always keep things clear. Michael Caine is terrific and super cool. The violence is sudden and brutal. A simpler plot would have allowed the audience to concentrate on the film's strength which is Caine and his vicious character. I can certainly see why this is a cult classic for many gangster movie enthusiasts.

I am somewhat mystified by the reputation of Get Carter as a cult classic. To me, this is a portrait of revenge and the self-destructive effect that it has upon the perpetrator, who basically transmogrifies into his enemy by deigning to conduct himself as he did--and worse. In this case, the angry Carter seeks to avenge his brother's murder, but ends up whacking everyone and his sister, girlfriend, and other random associates along the way. Pretty unsettling and more a statement of the killer's deranged mental state than anything else. Near the end, he was even starting to resemble Henry Lee Lucas a bit."He who lives by the gun dies by the gun" is essentially the moral of this story. Or, if you like: "What goes around comes around," or perhaps "violence breeds violence." There was nothing noble whatsoever in this killing spree. I do aver that Michael Caine did a pretty good job in the role of someone suffering from serious, big-time OCD with a major idée fixe expressed only in the medium of yet more homicide. Too bad he wasn't a poet instead.

For a start, I am only 21 so my perception of what was and is thought to be acceptable good film making might in some ways have been spoilt by the more recent sorts of films I 'grew up' with, but I was quite disappointed with Get Carter taken as a whole.The prime reason for me for giving this film a go lately was the recommendation of its plain striking atmosphere and given my personal fascination for the Tyneside area I definitely loved the 'authentic' setting of the scenery. It certainly is the thing I liked most about this work, but unfortunately that is almost it. Apart from this the film has some good moments (the very first few cuts of Eklands driving scene...like a couple of other elements this gets exhausting) and the somewhat nihilistic straightness and turns of the plot, let alone the congenial ending, are one thing I could highly enjoy on one side, yet on the other the story 'development' just does not seem to cope with implementing these aspects suitably - neither do including Caine most of the actors, who often enough appear slightly misplaced (for the role of Carter that unluckily does Not apply in the good sense of him as a resolute tough intruder in the northern criminal milieu..) and awkward, which adds to the artificial feeling of the storyline and Carter pulling (shagging and slaying) his mission through. At this point I do not want to vent extensively on some of the conflict scenes, especially around the final, because to me their pathetic setting and acting are too obvious a flaw.After all there are just too many things that do not work together. I left this film behind feeling that it was too half-heartedly conceptualised/made and undeliberately empty to really be that respectively quite overrated top classic some consider it to be.