La loi du milieu

This film has a stunning Michael Caine play cold-blooded gangster Jack Carter on a quest for vengeance. Carter never wavers, he never strays from his path, he is like a surgical instrument that cuts down everything in his way with clinical precision without passion or mercy. If the Terminator were a human character, he would be Carter. Alfred he is not (hint: that's a Batman reference) . One of the best British crime flicks ever. 8 stars out of 10.

In case you're interested in more underrated masterpieces, here's some of my favorites:

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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.

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.

Jack Carter is not someone you'd usually want to take home to your mother. He's a career criminal, a gangster in London whose brother was in Newcastle (his hometown) when he found out that he died under mysterious circumstances. Already we're on his side, since it was obviously not a typical drunk-driving accident that caused Frank Carter's death, and we want to see revenge and/or justice. But Jack Carter, that man with a near-permanent dour look on his face and a tendency to get violent, isn't a typical protagonist. He's something of an anti-hero, a nasty one at that, who is a perpetual womanizer (in one oddly hot scene he talks with a direct tone on the phone with a gangster's moll to take off her clothes and masturbate), and will hurt anyone he needs to, sometimes to extreme lengths, to get what he needs to know.

Certainly he's surrounded in a murky enough criminal environment. The Newcastle of 'Get Carter' is a place with sleazy gangsters betting big bucks and nightclubs with of-the-period music, and women running hotels with weathered looks on their faces. It's here that Carter goes on his investigation, like a hard-boiled detective without mercy. And as he digs deeper into what is at the heart of the mystery- that Frank Carter wasn't a saint, but got duped by the criminal elements and in a pornographic film that brings Jack to tears of rage- it becomes clear he'll have to knock a few heads, and shoot when he must... which is a lot.

Carter might be more unlikable if not for the star in the role. Michael Caine has a look to him in this film that recalls Alain Delon in the Jean-Pierre Melville pictures, specifically Le Samourai. Nothing can really flinch this guy, unless it's something that he actually cares about. But Caine gives humanity to a character that is on the move, almost always, and has to be on his toes when around unsavory characters. I loved seeing how Caine can just be great at looking around a room or a situation or looking over a person, and how when he gets angry, boy you better get out (even if, or sometimes especially because, you're a woman not dishing on what needs to be told). Caine helps a film that needs that star quality- other actors like John Osbourne as the Big Gangster Kinnear and Ian Hendry as Eric do well enough if only good performances- and where the film digs into some subversive, dark terrain, we have to keep watching it to see how Caine can pull it off.

Another perk for Hodges is how he deals with the action. Often his film will feel a little slow-going (never too boring, but of a time period, the 70's, when a story could take a little more time in establishing mood), but when action and violence come up it's genuinely shocking and thrilling. We expect to get some satisfaction seeing Carter getting his payback at the criminals, but here there's a dastardly twist as to how just rotten Carter can be with these figures. He goes to their level, and Hodges lets us go along for the wicked neo-noir ride. Some may find it too dark, or just a little too unrelentingly bleak with what Carter finds and how he gets his revenge. But there's the bittersweet part to it as well, especially in the last act, that makes it worthwhile.

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.