La loi du milieu

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 .

The movie's an ice-cold exercise in revenge, with a no-nonsense script and a first-rate turn by Caine as the heck-bent avenger. Someone killed his brother and, by golly, they're going to pay along with anyone else who gets in his way. The idea's not new; what's different is that Carter (Caine) has almost no redeeming qualities. He's about as cold blooded as the worst of the gangsters he confronts. Rooting for him is like rooting for a stomach pain over a headache.

Then too, Caine's ice-blue eyes are put to good use in sizing up his targets. And catch that gear shifting in the fast car timed to coincide with Carter's fast action on the bed. At last the subtext of all those sleek auto advertisements is revealed, this time in high octane. I just wish we saw more of Ms. Ekland, both literally and especially figuratively. And if that's not enough, catch that great ending. It's a marvel of imaginative staging and a perfect cap to what's gone before. Anyway, the movie reminds me of a polished piece of glass-- just about as cold and shiny and needing no depth. I couldn't stop looking at it.

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.

London criminal Michael Caine returns to Newcastle for his straight-arrow brother's funeral. The police say he got drunk and killed himself in a driving accident, but little bits don't add up. Caine pokes around Newcastle's dirtier side and becomes convinced it was a murder. But who and why?

It's a thoroughly unlikable movie, from Caine's seething performance through Wolfgang Suchitsky's overcast Technicolor lighting through the apathetic and evil people who inhabit the movie's world. At the same time, this neo-noir take on the Elizabethan Revenge drama is a brilliant exposition on the dark side. There's no one to admire here, no dark humor. The people in charge are not misfits. John Osborne, as a local crook, isn't a man oppressed by his environment, searching for a meaning that isn't there. He's a smart man who has judged his society accurately and coldly applied its rules to his own profit.

Caine's self-loathing rage is likewise efficiently applied. The police won't come and save anyone, they won't avenge anyone, they won't restore order by finding the bad guys. They are almost unseen, a howling car showing up too late, unable to stop or even notice Caine's spree. There is no justice, just revenge, and application of the rule that mad dogs must be put down.