Get Carter (2000) Reviews

• Perfectly watchable thriller - but little more

  Pedro_H2003-09-11

  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."

• Get (the original) Carter

  BroadswordCallinDannyBoy2007-04-05

  A remake of the 1971 film with Michael Caine. Las Vegas mob enforcer Jack Carter travels to Seattle to investigate his brother's mysterious death. Local crime lords want him out, but Carter unrelentingly proceeds in finding the truth. Starting with a promising beginning (though it remains amusing that someone thought that Stallone can match Caine's acting) the film soon slumps into a bad case of mediocrity. It has the same idea as the original and tries to be as badass with its kinetic and almost experimental direction, but ends up being just poor. Stallone's Carter is given an almost soft side that goes complete against the character from the first film. On top of that there are some enjoyable car chases, but they serve as sensationalism that was critically lacking from the first film. Then there is the ending, which has some merit (since the film already establish Carter as softer then the original), but even so, it is still pretty stupid and leaves the film with little to say or resonate with. That ultimately makes this is second rate crime movie that you might enjoy, but don't count it. --- 5/10 Rated R for violence and profanity

• Inferior Remake

  JamesHitchcock2005-10-06

  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

• Started well, ended badly.

  glennwalsh442003-01-08

  CONTAINS SPOILERS. As someone who ranks 'Get Carter' (1971) on my top ten list, I probably should have avoided this, but curiosity got the better of me and I finally got a copy of the re-make on VHS in a sale. It started well and there were some nice nods to the original film, notably Carter's traveling to Seattle by train, the theme music and of course Caine's cameo. Did anyone notice that the guys sent from Vegas came in a Jaguar? I assumed that Seattle was a good US version of Newcastle, northern, wet and gloomy. Unfortunately as the film progressed it became obvious that this was not in the same class as the original. In fairness, there was some good acting from Stallone and Rourke and the action sequences were well-handled and stylish, particularly the car chase. Unfortunately, that wasn't enough to save the film. The problem was that no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't help comparing it to the 1971 version. In the original Carter is cold and calculating beyond anything we have seen before to the point of being irredeemable and it was this facet that shocked audiences then and still does. He only shows emotion once, when he sees the 'blue' film, but this only stirs him into violence rather than reason. He kills without compunction everyone he feels responsible for his family's fate and those he can't kill he leaves open to the authorities. He is the ultimate 'hard man,' and when he says 'with me it's a full time job' you know he means it. Stallone's Carter should be in group therapy by comparison. He comes across as actually quite weak by the end of the film. In the original we never know for sure that Doreen is his daughter (rather than niece), but it is signposted. In the Hollywood version it is made explicit and the story loses a lot of impact, replaced by some sort of father-daughter bonding that is out of touch with Carter's character. BIG SPOILER - YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED. The ending really put the cap on things. For those of you still reading this who have not seen the original (you have been warned), Carter is shot dead by a hit man after killing Paice. The irony is that Kinnear has ordered this not knowing that he is about to be arrested by the vice squad for peddling under-age pornography. All of this is lost in the re-make as Stallone's Jack Carter drives off into the sunset, presumably redeemed by his experiences. And with that, a classic is reduced to a good, but not great thriller.

• Another unappreciated film by an unappreciated icon

  invincible_seattle2002-08-01

  For some unknown reason, the industry 'suits' have decided to black-list Sylvester Stallone, not giving him large leading roles, and when they give him a role, they refuse to heavily market his films. This trend started, I believe, sometime during the early 90s, probably after his last big hit, "Cliffhanger." Nevertheless, Stallone has continued to make films, most of them actually pretty good. That said, "Get Carter" is probably one of Stallone's better films of the last ten years (I think it's second to "Cop Land"). He portrays his role as the 'financial adjuster' (as he described it) Jack Carter. The remainder of the supporting cast, including Mickey Rourke, Rachel Leigh Cook, John C. McGinley, Alan Cumming and Michael Caine, each deliver convincing performances, conveying their characters' emotions with amazing quality. I really noticed the way the film's editing and photography changed towards the end of the film, after beating up McCarty (McGinley) in the elevator. The way the film swiftly cuts ahead a couple of seconds is simply spectacular to watch. The many odd photography angles describe the uncertainty of the scenes, and make me feel unsure as well. Living in the Seattle area, seeing the great landmarks I see every day on the screen is quite something else. And for the record, it doesn't rain nearly as much here as people think. If you haven't watched this film and have heard all the negative reviews given by the industry-paid critics, ignore them and rent it. You'll be pleasantly surprised.