Get Carter

STAR RATING:*****Unmissable****Very Good***Okay**You Could Go Out For A Meal Instead*Avoid At All Costs

Stallone's remake of the 1971 classic of the same title finally arrives over on British shores.Only it arrives straight to video.This probably isn't very surprising anyway.The Michael Caine (who also appears here,albeit not in the title role again!) original is seen as an untouchable classic by our movie-going public,and an American re-make would probably be interpreted as the ultimate kick-in-the-teeth.

But for those not bothered about cultural rivalry or who weren't alive when the original was released,this really isn't that bad a film.It has a really involving camera style and the mystery of Stallone's brothers death is intriguing.There are some interesting characters,with Caine as a mysterious promoter type,Mickey Rourke as an old rival of Stallone's and Miranda Richardson as his deceased brother's wife.

This is sadly though,however,a real case of style over substance,all of these things are really well thought out but for some weird reason,they don't really blend that well together.

Still,considering Stallone's recent turkeys,this is quite likely his best in a long while and really not a bad effort.***

By far, the most entertaining moment on the DVD of "Get Carter" is the hilariously outdated 1971 theatrical preview for the original version of the film, which starred Michael Caine. (Caine does appear in this Stallone update.) Sadly, this update stinks. Sylvester Stallone's Jack Carter, a Las Vegas button man, skips town without his boss's permission and heads up to his old stomping grounds in Seattle to investigate the mysterious death of his brother, whom he hasn't seen in five years. That's the pitch.

The action is surprisingly restrained and impressionistic. For example, when one of the minor bad guys gets killed, we see the result of a headlong plunge but not the actual slaying. But this kind of restraint doesn't dovetail with the promise of the previews: an ass-kicking Stallone in a Rat Pack suit. The director tries to gloss over the many plot holes with slick, faux-Fincher cuts and zooms, but he's just covering.

Here's the tragedy. Action-thrillers don't require good acting, but they sure are enhanced by it. Most of the actors in "Get Carter" have the ability to far outshine this genre, much the way the actors in 1998's "Ronin" did-within the context of the plot, the cast of "Ronin" delivered their lines with utter conviction.

Not necessarily so here. Those stars in "Get Carter" who have real talent weren't used enough, and those who don't have the strongest dramatic chops were given boatloads of screen time. Sly is wooden at times (as per usual), but has some fine moments.

Miranda Richardson, as Carter's widowed sister-in-law, is solid, but underutilized. Mickey Rourke, as an internet porn purveyor, has obviously been working out some more, but it's still apparent that he peaked in "Diner." The big surprise was just how much actual characterization they allowed Rachael Leigh Cook--as Carter's bereaved niece--to show off. Any one of these actors, given enough on-screen opportunity, might have saved "Get Carter" from its ridiculous plot holes and incongruities. But they didn't. Do yourself a favor: avoid this film.

A mob enforcer goes back to his native Seattle to sort out the suspicious death of his brother.

The original film is one of the best English thrillers of all time and despite being made nearly thirty years ago still packs a punch. Sadly this film is not really in its league, despite a bigger budget and more ground coverage.

The main problem is that the authors clearly love the original and this leaves so much of what happens as a question mark to the new viewer. Characters are thrown in from nowhere and Carters involvement with his bosses' girl is almost in another movie. Micheal Caine's small role (as a barman) is funny in that he was the original Jack Carter, here reprised by Sly Stallone.

While quick to admit this is mediocre stuff you have to say that you get your share of car chases (well done too), fights, creeps, sleaze, family bonding, shoot outs and even the odd bit of light humour. The fight between Stallone and Mickey Rouke (here playing a buisnessman-stroke-creep) for example.

This film features interesting cinematography, with strange forward jump cuts (ripped off from The Limey), odd angles and the use of colour filters. In short, the producers trying to make more out of the material than is in the script. The choice of a wet Seattle is also curious and different. Presumably the nearest to Newcastle-Upon-Tyne (the setting of the original) that the producers could think of.

So it is only an average product, but will see much worse than this in our lifetime and it does move along at a fair and steady clip. People are getting to knock Stallone for being Stallone, but he doesn't do bad a job here, a stonefaced enforcer that is prepared to shed a tear when needs be! Not great acting, but he looks the part.

Don't be put off by the low IMDB ratings, plenty of worthy films are two or three points higher but are far more boring. Popcorn fodder it may be, but I thought it was worth seeing through and even declared myself modestly entertained at the end of it. Not as good as the original but not a lot is.

Footnote: This is actually not the first remake of Get Carter. A blackspolitation version was made in the 1970's called "Hitman."

Violent film about a hardman named Jack Carter, he is a domineering , dapper angel of vengeance who returns home to investigate a familiar crime and meets sleazy character after another . An acceptable noir film produced by actor Andrew Stevens , Elie Samaha and professionally directed by Stephen Kay (Boogeyman , The last time I committed suicide), though with no originality . 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 (hard-working star Sylvester Stallone) , a tough , amoral gangster who works as a killer in Los Angeles . Passable Sylvester Stallone in the title role , but inferior to Michael Caine (he played Jack Carter in the original) here playing a secondary role as Cliff Brumby (his character was only in one scene in the original cut, but test audiences said they liked him and they transformed the movie to have Caine as the bad guy) . Here Stallone is a hit-man who returns home to investigate his brother's death by some mobsters .As he decides to travel his natal Seattle to investigate who is responsible ; Jack contends enemies , but he stands a head above fellow hoods , but not apart from them . Two-fisted Jack in order to revenge his sibling , vows vengeance and spontaneously meets sleazy characters (bad ass Mickey Rourke and nasty computer magnate Alan Cummings) in the middle of sinister bands war and running afoul into underworld . When his brother dies under mysterious circumstances in a car accident , gangster Jack Carter travels to Seattle to investigate and reunites his widow (Miranda Richardson and niece (Rachael Leigh Cook) and he subsequently meets ominous characters who may have been involved . Carter aware the murder of his brother at the hands of a "gang" opponent led by a mobster . We see as his facade of sophisticated and elegant mob gentleman with exquisite manners , educated pose , and expensive costumes , begins collapsing , leaving see the lascivious, malleability and a cold killer . Carter starts moving in this ambient but all of this ends in a shocking discovery delivered by a compact disc which greatly angers Carter . This triggers a wave of violence that sweeps the the underworld lumpen in Seattle . 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 , well-staged car chases , raw energy , adult subject matter , clunking cruelty surrounding , lots of violence and enlivened by high-powered performances . Plenty of intrigue, atmospheric music ,noisy action and grisly killings until impressive finale vengeance . It is a very violent film , depressing charismatic , magnificently set , but always strong , with a perfect abstraction of a climate of moral misery to game with a colorful photography by magnificent cameraman Mario Fiore . Adequate and moving musical score by Tyler Bates with a rare mixture . The picture obtained moderated Box office , there were plans to do a sequel which never materialized .

The main differences between the classic version and this recently made story are the following : The British 1971 bruising film "GET CARTER¨ far superior to remake , is an original movie with abundant nudism , kinky sex , excessively violent and set in Newcastle , a city in northern England portrayed as a cool place , foggy , sordid , rainy , dirty , gray and industrial aspect , shabby environment and ramshackle scenarios , full of sad pubs , buildings almost in ruins , piers of black water and ravaged aspect postindustrial , while this remake 2000 , viewed as an act of sacrilege in Britain , was set in rain-lashed Seattle , a bustling city full of light and luxurious pubs and glamorous nightclubs .

GET CARTER 1971 was splendidly performed by Michael Caine with Ian Hendry , John Osborne and Britt Ekland ; there is also 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 .

The central figure of this film, Jack Carter, is a Las Vegas gangster who returns to his roots in Seattle following the death of his brother. This was officially reported as an accident, but Jack suspects that his brother may have been murdered by members of the local criminal underworld. The film charts Jack's attempts to find out the truth and to take revenge.

This is, of course, a good example of Hollywood's cannibalising of the British and European film industries in its endless search for a good story. It is a remake of Mike Hodges's classic from 1971, one of the few great British gangster films. That film was one that grew out of, and yet at the same time transcended, a particular place and time, the North-East of England in the early seventies. This was a time of rapid social change in Britain, marked by increasing social mobility, growing permissiveness and relative prosperity, elements all reflected in the film. Like many of the best British films, it had a strong sense of place. Its fidelity to a real time and place was not a weakness but a strength, helping to establish it firmly in the realm of reality and to convey its major theme, the sterility and futility of the criminal lifestyle. Its view of the underworld acted as a necessary antidote to the tendency, very prevalent in the late sixties and early seventies, to glamorise criminals ("The Thomas Crown Affair), sentimentalise them ("The Italian Job") or mythologise them ("The Godfather").

Stephen Kay's film attempts to establish a similar sense of place to the original; the Seattle we see has a bleak, forbidding atmosphere, always shrouded in rain or mist. It has a much more star-studded cast than the original, with at least one reasonably good performance from a convincingly thuggish Mickey Rourke. Despite this, however, it is a far inferior film when compared with the original. The main reason is the way in which the character of Jack Carter has been changed. Michael Caine's Carter was, for all his sharp suits and fast cars, no more than a ruthless street thug, a poor boy made bad at a time when other poor boys were making good. Sylvester Stallone's character, by contrast, may have a rough exterior (Stallone plays him as outwardly impassive, with a gruff, emotionless voice) but beneath it he is one of the good guys. The plot has been rewritten to make Carter less brutal and ruthless and to allow him to survive at the end. The original was a morality play on (as another reviewer has pointed out) the theme of "those who live by the sword shall die by the sword". The remake is simply a revenge thriller with a hero whom the audience can root for.

This illustrates one of the perils of the remake. Kay's film has kept the title, the bare outlines of the plot and even some of the names of the characters, but completely fails to capture the spirit of the original. Moreover, it is unable to replace that spirit with anything new. If the film-makers had wanted to make an exciting goodie-versus-baddies revenge thriller, they could have chosen a better starting-point than the plot of a film made some thirty years earlier with a very different aim in mind.

It has become something of a tradition for remakes to feature cameo appearances by the stars of the original films. Martin Scorsese's "Cape Fear", for example, featured no fewer than three actors who had appeared in the earlier J. Lee Thompson version, Gregory Peck, Robert Mitchum and Martin Balsam. That, however, was a rare example of a remake that we as good as, or even better than, the original. Kay's "Get Carter", however, is not in the same class as Hodges's. It was, therefore, rather disappointing to see Michael Caine appearing in a remake that can only diminish one of his best films. 4/10