La loi du milieu

British gangster classic starring Michael Caine as the eminently quotable, ultimately tough Jack Carter

Hard to believe that a major studio felt the need to remake this British gangster classic, which ranks up there with the likes of The Long Good Friday as one of the finest home grown films of the past 30 years.

Caine is the gangster who goes to Newcastle for his brother's funeral and begins to suspect his death was no accident; cue edgy thrills and violence as he exacts revenge on the folks he believes responsible.

Caine, as in the majority of his signature roles, is superbly armed with a set of eminently quotable one-liners ("You're a big man, but you're out of shape" tops the bill this time), and as emotionally detached and violently ruthless as Point Blank's similarly vengeful Lee Marvin, while director Hodges paints a gritty, bleak picture of the gangster underworld.

Soap fans will be equally intrigued to see Coronation Street's Alf Roberts (aka Bryan Moseley) being tossed off a roof.

I saw this together with "The Silencers." The two were roughly contemporary and both played with notions of cool. There is a sort of symmetry here that I think is intrinsic to cool.

It is a symmetry of misogynism. The idea with Dean Martin's thing is probably more familiar to most viewers through Austin Powers. Martin is basically an ugly thug whose fame was based on fantasies about the rat pack. But we are to believe that women — here as automatons with pink bits — automatically adjust to him as god merely through presence. There are gadgets and settings too, and everything emanates from the being of the man. Cinematically speaking, it is Italian storytelling.

Here in Carter we have something else. Its the same pull on values. The man has charm, enough that every woman in his orbit gets seduced and suffers. But the entire dynamic is different. Its the environment here that is the focus, not the man. Unfortunately, this film has not aged well and we have much, much better examples of cool ground out from a gritty machine.

This guy is a genuine thug. To be cool in this mold you cannot be violent. You have to be an observer, one who understands the workings of the machine that surrounds. Small insights into those workings give great advantage. The cinematic expression of that dynamic is not groundbreaking in this film. But it is there, is gritty in a human way and gives a worthy ending as the machine grinds on, another viewer somewhere having gotten some small advantage.

I have not seen the remake, I think. But it is hard to imagine it working as well. This, by the way, was when Caine was real and true. When he understood this business of what I call folded acting, where he could spend some energy being the character, and some being in the character of an actor playing the guy. Two, simultaneous conversations with us, one with us as a watcher.

Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.

An excellent noir cinema produced by Michael Caine and very well directed by Mike Hodges ; an extremely tough movie burdened by cruel murders and seedy characters , based on a novel titled 'Get Carter' by Ted Lewis from 1970 . This brutal , austere crime-thriller focuses a cheerless enforcer Jack Carter (Michael Caine) , a tough , amoral gangster who works as a killer at the town . Magnificent Michael Caine in the title role , he's a hit-man who returns home to investigate his brother's death by some mobsters . Two-fisted Jack in order to revenge his sibling , vows vengeance and spontaneously meets sleazy characters (Ian Hendry, Mosley) in the middle of sinister bands war and running afoul into underworld . When his brother dies under mysterious circumstances in a car accident , London gangster Jack Carter travels to Newcastle to investigate and meets nasty characters who may have been involved . Carter aware the murder of his brother at the hands of a "gang" opponent led by a mobster (John Osborne) . As he decides to travel his natal Newcastle to investigate who is responsible . This city in northern England is portrayed as a cool place , foggy , sordid , rainy , dirty , gray and industrial aspect . Carter starts moving in this ambient , full of sad pubs , horse races , buildings almost in ruins , piers of black water and ravaged aspect postindustrial , which had almost erased from his memory . While we see as his facade of sophisticated and elegant Londoner gentleman with exquisite manners , educated pose, and expensive costumes , begins collapsing , leaving see the lascivious, malleability and cold killer . All of this ends up in the discovery of X film involving his niece what angry Jack Carter enormously . This triggers a wave of violence that sweeps the the underworld lumpen in northern England . Carter keeps the things moving along until ending vendetta. The end of the film is like a summary of the entire story for the scenarios that uses austere bleak and cold environment.

This interesting film features thrills , raw energy ,adult subject matter with abundant nudism , lots of violence and enlivened by high-powered performances . Plenty of intrigue, atmospheric music , kinky sex ,noisy action and grisly killings until impressive finale vengeance . It is a movie very violent , depressing charismatic , magnificently set , but always strong , with a perfect abstraction of a climate of moral misery to game with the cold environment and ramshackle scenarios well photographed by cameraman Wolfgang Suschitzky . Adequate musical score by Roy Budd with a rare mixture , the dark psychedelia of the movement "Northen Soul" , so fashionable in the proletarian clubs from the north of England of the 70s .

This British 1971 film "GET CARTER¨ is an original movie and is far superior subsequent 1972 remake , a Black Gangster version titled ¨The hit-man¨, a Blaxploitiation movie regularly directed by George Armitage with Bernie Casie , Pam Grier , Roger E Mosley and Paul Gleason . And remade again (2000) by Stephen Kay , in which Las Vegas avenger goes home to Seattle to learn his brother's death , starred by Silvester Stallone in the title role , Miranda Richardson , Alan Cummings , Mickey Rourke and again Michael Caine at a special appearance .

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.

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.