Get Carter 1971 Review

Get Carter 1971 — 

GET CARTER embodies the mood and demeanor of the lead character it profiles.  It's a bitter, gritty and bleak movie with perhaps the finest Michael Caine performance you have ever seen (and that's saying a lot, I realize).  Writer/Director Mike Hodges' tale was an obvious influence on several later British films such as The Long Good Friday, The Krays and Mona Lisa--Films that unflinchingly focused on character above all else.

You can see CARTER'S influence on a lot of films including Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels , The Limey and Ghost Dog Way of the Samurai ,with their simple revenge driven motifs.  Those films however added gimmicks and tricks to the mix.  Get Carter trusts its material and it's actors and stays disturbingly quiet, and deceptively simple-though internally quite complex. I'll bet Scorsese's Taxi Driver was influenced by this one as well.

You need to know that Get Carter is a very English (as in British) film though one of its primary influences is John Boorma's 1967 classic Point Blank.  At the time of its release many critics called Get Carter a British Point Blank   Point Blank however had a very discernible American style as it somewhat re-invented and updated noir. GET CARTER is thoroughtly British and wouldn't translate well to an American setting without serious alteration  (no I never saw the supposedly god-awful Sylvester Stallone re-make).

Michael Caine as the gangster Carter may remind you of a darker, more cynical and mature ALFIE (the cheeky Casanova from the 1966 film that made Caine an international star).  Carter is an over-confident, immoral, womanizing  hit man who'll snap his fingers and demand a pint of bitter in a thin glass and then later have phone sex, while being observed with his married mistress, Brit Eckland (a cutting edge scene in ‘71).

Some of the events in the film are inspired by real life events, but few Americans have ever heard of them (they concern British gangsters).  The film opens with Carter (Caine)  at a get-together of mostly men who are watching pornographic film loops.  We immediately see a determined intensity. spare dialogue informs us Carter's brother has been killed in the working class town of Newcastle. Caine doesn't believe his brother committed suicide and he's decided to investigate, in spite of being advised against doing so.

The film slowly reveals details to us as Carter returns to the town he spent part of a rough youth in.  The gang he works for in London is known and respected in Newcastle, but the gangsters in Newcastle are anxious to help Carter leave town as soon as possible.  They don't want him sniffing around.  Carter finds a room in a boarding house run by a lonely woman just past her prime.  We realize Carter cares about his now fatherless niece.  He feels it's his responsibility not to interfere in her life but to be sure she is safe and cared for. Perhaps there's another reason for his caring.    He also quickly realizes his hunch was right and his brother was indeed murdered-brutally.  Finding out why, and making sure he personally gets revenge on the perpetrator becomes his only purpose, his only focus. 

The film is purposely stripped of any visual poetry and shows us a drab, Newcastle.  There are seedy pubs, run down row houses, sloppy construction projects and polluted beaches.  There are no classic German or American Noir shots of shadows and light, fog or atmosphere. Director Hodges is being stylish by carefully avoiding a sense of style, observing methodically, like footage shot for some unimaginative city planning board study.  It creates an underlining feeling of despair and takes us to places almost absent of any charm, whose only character is one of slow rot.  Of course this makes a good analogy to what has happened to Carter internally.  He's crossed over all ethical and moral lines in his life too many times to remain untouched.  And he can't ignore what he's become when it's caused his brother to be brutally murdered.

We see him trying to hold onto some sort of idea of romance (he reads Chandler's Farewell My Lovely) on the train.  He at least briefly satisfies some women sexually.  He adheres somewhat to a criminal's code of ethics.  He's trustworthy up to a point, and he's not interested in hurting people who don't deserve to be hurt-unless they get in the way.

The prettiest lady in town is the head gangster's moll and eventually she assists Carter and of course they sleep together.  Carter sleeps with almost anyone he feels like, but it means almost nothing, he's barely alive inside.  He's made his living as a cool calculated hit man.  He's cut himself off from real feelings and so part of him lives in some lonely place within himself (like Taxi Driver's  Travis Bickle).  He's also full of guilt which he can no longer avoid and must now deal with.  He lets it help fuel his purpose even if it ultimately makes him reckless and so single minded on his goal of revenge that he ignores the danger he's put himself in.

At times Get Carter is a brutal film.  There are sudden explosions of violence in the film which are ugly as violence truly is.  When we realize there is a bit of good in Carter, it means we also realize he's made choices which have doomed him to this life.  As the film progresses we realize that several choices he's made have created an inner-turmoil and horror Carter barely lets us see.

It's a  bleak, unromanticized film of  thugs, gangsters, and the working poor.  The humor comes from the desperate bitterness of the characters we meet. Characters played to perfection by Ian Hendry, Bernard Hepton and John Osborne (who wrote the play Look Back in Anger).

Ultimately anyone who relishes seeing a great actor give as perfect a performance as you can imagine needs to see this film.  Never does Caine force a line or try for audience sympathy or understanding with anything he does through his performance. 

OF INTEREST:

Mike Hodges  directed another gem called CROUPIER, a 1998 film that was barely released to U.S. theaters in 2001 and discovered by many on VHS and DVD. 

DVD STUFF

IMAGE AND SOUND

There's some noticeable damage to the film visible during the opening credits and there's more graininess to the film then recent ones--but its perfectly in keeping with the atmosphere and mood of the film.

The audio of Get Carter is Dolby Digital 1.0.  The actors dialogue, sparse but effective musical score and sound effects are  mixed well together.  The dialogue is always easy to hear, thick brit-accents and all.

Extra Features:

You can listen to Roy Budd's memorable score on an isolated track.  It is presented in Dolby 2.0 which is nice.  The score is sparse but masterful.

Two theatrical trailers are included. The first is the international trailer presented in anamorphic widescreen. The picture and sound are fair.   The second trailer is a real oddity and features film compose Roy Budd, composing music as he watches scenes from the film.  I've never seen a trailer like that ever before.

COMMENTARY TRACK:

Mike Hodges talks about making the film and remembers a lot of the small details as if he had just worked on the movie recently. It's mostly a screen specific comentary .  Sometimes inserted into the commentary are some previously taped comments made by Michael Caine and cinematographer Suchitzky. 

Mke Hodges made the interesting 1972 Pulp and then a string of films that only bear passing resemblance to good films like:Black Rainbow, Prayer for the Dying, Morons from Outer Space , Flash Gordon, The Terminal Man before returing to great form with Croupier.