Get Carter

Plot synopsis:
Newcastle-born gangster Jack Carter has lived in London for years in the employ of organised crime bosses Gerald and Sid Fletcher. Jack is sleeping with Gerald's girlfriend Anna and plans to escape with her to South America. But first he must return to Newcastle and Gateshead to attend the funeral of his brother Frank, who died in a purported drunk-driving accident. Unsatisfied with the official explanation, Jack investigates for himself. At the funeral Jack meets his teenage niece Doreen and Frank's evasive mistress Margaret. It is later implied that Doreen might actually be Jack's daughter.
Jack goes to Newcastle Racecourse seeking old acquaintance Albert Swift for information about his brother's death, however Swift spots Jack and evades him. Jack encounters another old associate, Eric Paice, who refuses to tell Jack who is employing him as a chauffeur. Tailing Eric leads him to the country house of crime boss Cyril Kinnear. Jack bursts in on Kinnear, who is playing poker, but learns little from him; he also meets a glamorous drunken woman, Glenda. As Jack leaves, Eric warns him against damaging relations between Kinnear and the Fletchers. Back in town, Jack is threatened by henchmen who want him to leave town, but he fights them off, capturing and interrogating one to find out who wants him gone. He is given the name "Brumby".
Jack knows Cliff Brumby as a businessman with controlling interests in local seaside amusement arcades. Visiting Brumby's house Jack discovers the man knows nothing about him and, believing he has been set up, he leaves. The next morning two of Jack's London colleagues arrive, sent by the Fletchers to take him back, but he escapes. Jack meets Margaret to talk about Frank, but Fletcher's men are waiting and pursue him. He is rescued by Glenda who takes him in her sports car to meet Brumby at his new restaurant development at the top of a multi-storey car park. Brumby identifies Kinnear as being behind Frank's death, also explaining that Kinnear is trying to take over his business. He offers Jack £5,000 to kill the crime boss, which he flatly refuses.
Jack has sex with Glenda at her flat, where he finds and watches a pornographic film where Doreen is forced to have sex with Albert Swift. The other participants in the film are Glenda and Margaret. Overcome with emotion, Jack becomes enraged and pushes Glenda's head under water as she is taking a bath. She tells him the film was Kinnear's, and that she thinks Doreen was 'pulled' by Eric. Forcing Glenda into the boot of her car, Jack drives off to find Albert.
Jack tracks Albert down at a betting shop. Albert confesses he told Brumby that Doreen was, indeed, Frank's daughter. Brumby showed Frank the film to incite him to call the police on Kinnear. Eric and two of his men arranged Frank's death. Information extracted, Jack fatally knifes Albert. Jack is attacked by the London gangsters and Eric, who has informed Fletcher of Jack and Anna's affair. Jack shoots one of them dead. As Eric and the others escape they push the sports car into the river with Glenda trapped inside. Returning to the car park Jack finds Brumby, beats him senseless and throws him over the side to his death. He then posts the pornographic film to the vice squad at Scotland Yard in London.
Jack abducts Margaret at gunpoint. He telephones Kinnear in the middle of a wild party, telling him he has the film and makes a deal for Kinnear to give him Eric in exchange for his silence. Kinnear agrees, sending Eric to an agreed location; however, he subsequently phones a hitman to dispose of Jack. Jack drives Margaret to the grounds of Kinnear's estate, kills her with a fatal injection and leaves her body there. He then calls the police to raid Kinnear's party.
Jack chases Eric along a beach. He forces Eric to drink a full bottle of whisky as he did to Frank, then beats him to death with his shotgun. As Jack is walking along the shoreline, he is shot through the head by the hitman with a sniper rifle.

Tags: cult, revenge, neo noir, murder

Review:
Michael Caine stars as Jack Carter, a tough no nonsense operator in the London underworld who returns to his home town of Newcastle Upon Tyne when his brother turns up dead.
Yet Jack is not devoid of heartfelt emotion, his family ties are strong, and there is a point in the film when Jack sheds a tear, it is then when we all know that all bets are off and there will be no coming back from this particular abyss.Hodges and cinematographer Wolfgang Suschitzky strip it all back for maximum impact, so much so you can smell the salt of the murky sea, feel your lungs filling up with chimney smoke, the whiff of working class sweat is all around, and all the time Roy Budd's contemporary musical score jingles and jangles over proceedings like a dance of death waiting to reach its operatic conclusion.
And with Caine backed up by a roll call of super working class character actors, Get Carter just gets better as each decade of film making passes.Like its antagonist/protagonist (yes, Jack is both, a deliberate contradiction) it's a film as hard as nails, where home format releases should be delivered through your letterboxes in a metal case.
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.
Here he encounter a world of sleaze, booze, violence, casual sex and people in search of easy money.Hard to call it a classic early British gangster film given that they were so few around, but more a cracking thriller that makes full use of its cast, plot and (unusual) Newcastle Upon Tyne location.Writer-Director Mike Hodges wanted violence with reality and he delivers it with real punch.
Unlike most thrillers bystanders are not immune from the action and at various stages harsh punishment is handed out for minor crimes by anti-hero Caine.Caine underplays his hardman role nicely - letting the action, rather than his emotions, tell the story.Several people claim real-life events "inspired" this story, but as far as I can tell the only direct reference to real events is that the one-arm bandit business started to earn big money (in the North East) and London gangsters "wanted in." That lead to bloodshed, but that is not the thrust of this film - although one of the main characters is, indeed, in that business.Having gone to the trouble of reading the screenplay, I was surprised how thin the dialogue was.
This is a good example of how it is better to "show" things rather than "tell."  I did learn, however, that the thugs that come to beat Caine up are supposed to be gay - one may wear a  pink neckerchief but I thought that was just the dandy fashions of the day!Those that are not familiar with Newcastle may also like to note that the place is nowhere near the sea, in case you decide to take a holiday up there and are thinking of packing your trunks!On release the film did well enough in the UK, but died a death in the USA due to being released as a double bill with  Dirty Dingus Magee: A terrible Frank Sinatra movie.If you like hard-edged thrillers that don't play nice then Get Carter may well be worth your time and effort..
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, 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.
This film has a stunning Michael Caine play cold-blooded gangster Jack Carter on a quest for vengeance.
Newcastle itself, it has to be said,looks as cold and ruthless as Jack Carter himself and wouldnt be used by the North of England tourist board.Look out for some first rate performances especially Ian Hendry and the playwrite John Osbourne as a sinister Mr Big.The film is violent and uncompromising but also very entertaining with a neat line in black humour.
Carter, though no hero, is a great character, make no mistake about that, and he shows just enough emotion for the audience to identify with him: like when he stumbles across his dead brother's daughter in some seedy porn film, and the whole motivation for his revenge mission in the first place.
Get Carter though, exists in our world, and the superb characters, acting and writing make it totally believable - even when Michael Caine walks naked out of the door of his seedy B & B with his shotgun to escort out some local hoods, the most memorable thing you remember about the scene is the previously belligerent moaning old lady neighbour scurrying into her house, terrified.
Revenge ensues summarily, though director Mike Hodges, like Boorman before him and Soderbergh after, appreciates the boundaries of fatalism, the development toward the truth leading into the ocean, soggy and gloomy.Violence breeds violence, which breeds more violence in this enjoyable British gangster picture, a seminal film for Michael Caine, who sharpened his ability in his string of crime films in the 1960s, particularly in this one, to give such a charismatic and arresting performance as a character who has no intention---and neither do the filmmakers---of making us like him.
The spare, stationary camera-work is first-rate, capturing whole scenes in single unobtrusive let stylishly done takes, and Jack Carter's vicious and merciless revenge plays out against the backdrop of smoke-filled pubs, private social clubs and derelict urban housing, shot on location, a very clever approach as it includes intriguing spots like an apparently well-known raw concrete multi-storey parking garage with a rooftop café and a level in the process of being developed into a restaurant.
However, unlike Ritchie's films and what makes Get Carter more interesting overall is that it makes little to no attempt to be endearing, light-hearted or funny; its title character is cold-blooded, cruel and even unkind.In spite of its indulgences and what would become Hodges' signature lagging pace, Get Carter is a taut, potent procedural that doesn't bother with pious platitudes about the inability to live with a guilty conscience, that one doesn't want to see oneself as a bad guy, and instead gives us what is probably a much more realistic rendering of a gangster inhabiting a gang-controlled world, a guy who's content to see himself as a "villain," as he calls himself.
the question that continues to haunt me about this film, is, why does jack carter want to avenge his brother - that question may seem off the wall; modern western audiences have long accepted, as established fact, that revenge is generally a good thing, a kind of 'wild justice' as a philosopher once called it.outside of being utterly wrong and inevitably leading to unnecessary violence, this attitude makes it difficult to raise the really difficult question concerning any one particular act of revenge, namely, what is the real motivation to it.
which clearly makes him one of the most self-centered 'revengers' in film history.what hodge - borrowing inspiration from the lee Marvin film point blank - and Caine have done is to lure us into a frame of mind such that we expect carter to at last prove himself heroic, or perhaps tragic, or in some other way tangibly human - only to reveal the painful truth that he is none of these.
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 .
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 .
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 .
There isn't much character development for Michael Caine as Carter, but he is still good in a quiet, reserved performance.One surprise for me was that the film starred the famous English playwright John Osborne as one of the northern gangsters (Cyril).
I really thought the setting of the film is one of the most enjoyable parts of it, and alongside the haunting music really captures your interest more than it would in another location.If you want to recapture life in Britain in the 1970's you will love this movie, and it has some of the best British actors in it like Caine and Ian Hendry.
But what really shines is the exceptional performance from Michael Caine, playing as a man loyal, and caring, to his family: and mercilessly sadistic to everyone else.It opens with him viewing an array of pornography clips (which play a huge part to the plot in this film) with a variety of crime partners, bosses, and whores, and then his journey up to Newcastle where he finds, unexpectedly his brother in a coffin.
Mike Hodges interpretation of Ted Lewis's book, 'Jack's Return Home' is subtle but brilliant in execution.The overall atmosphere of the film, particularly the setting; Newcastle in the early 1970's is suffused with an aura of greyness,decay and corruption, the antithesis of the swinging 60's.Michael Caine's performance in particular is a masterpiece of understated menace combined with an assassin's smile and just enough drop-dead funny lines to lighten the leaden atmosphere.
The central figure of this film, Jack Carter, is a London gangster who returns to his roots in Newcastle (a large city in the North-East of England, for non-British readers) following the death of his brother Frank.
Like many of the best British films, Get Carter has what I would describe as a strong spirit of place, achieved in this case by the use of local dialect and of real-life north-eastern locations, such as the Tyne Bridge or the bleak stretch of coastline where coal waste is dumped into the sea and which forms the backdrop to the film's final scene.
For all his sharp suits and fast cars, Michael Caine's Carter (one of his best acting performances) is still no more than a ruthless street thug; a poor boy made bad at a time when other poor boys were making good.
The scene where Carter engages in phone sex in front of his landlady alone is worth the price of admission:  outrageous, dark, funny, brilliantly written, and chilling, it reminds you there was a time when the movies were as dangerous and exciting as off-Broadway theatre.Michael Caine defines the anti-hero with his performance.
Suspecting foul play after learning of his brother's death, a ruthless gangster returns home to find those responsible in this iconic British crime drama starring Michael Caine.
London gangster Jack Carter (Michael Caine) goes to Newcastle for his brother's funeral and investigate his death.
And in the case of Get Carter, that premise is very appealing.The movie begins with Jack Carter, (Michael Caine), an London gangster who is on his way to his hometown in Newcastle.
STAR RATING: ***** Saturday Night **** Friday Night *** Friday Morning ** Sunday Night * Monday Morning London gangster Jack Carter (Michael Caine) travels up north to Newcastle to investigate the mysterious death of his brother.
Instead the movie is more personal and humane and shows a realistic character, dealing with some tough personal situations when his brother dies and he starts to suspect it was foul play.It of course also helps that the main character is being played by Michael Caine, who is of course still successful now days but perhaps did his best work in the '70's and even prior to that.
My fav film of all time.have seen this over 30 times.captures British film making at its best when at the time America were buying our films believe it or not!!!Jack carter is a man on a mission and is no better than the people he is up against in avenging his brothers death but you get a sense of empathy towards the one man against the mob which carries him all the way through to the brutal end and its pretty grim but realistic pulls no punches has cutting dialogue and great acting throughout.look out for a rare film appearance from john osborne who is frighteningly creepy as kinnear.great film love it!!The film also contains real villains such as john bindon infamous London mobster who turned to acting as sid fletcher but blink and you miss him near the start of the film.also the gritty scenes of old newcastle before re-generation give it a more grimy feel..
get carter to me is a very very good film indeed, as ism from north-east england myself the film makes me feel very much at home what with the surroundings and accents of the characters i was not born until nine years after this film was released and just looking at the locations then and now it makes me realise how much the north-east has changed beyond recognition, many still look exactly the same of course such as the many bridges spanning the river tyne, but when it comes to the pubs and streets etc you would be forgiving for thinking it was a different city,the scene where Michael Caine goes to see his brothers car at the scrapyard seems very down to earth to me just the use of language as well as the high level bridge in the background.
Caine plays Jack Carter, a gangster who returns to his home town Newcastle Upon Tyne, to investigate the mysterious death of his brother, killed in a supposed drink driving accident.
With films by the likes of Guy Ritchie making up the current British gangster movie market, it's a shame more young people haven't seen this classic, understated original.
Michael Caine gives what should have been an Oscar winning performance as the gangland hitman Jack carter.Set in the backdrop of 60's Newcastle this film is a story of revenge on the highest scale.
He plays Jack Carter, a small time London gangster who travels to the town of Newcastle to investigate the death of his brother Frank.
Even for this movie, it's challenging to have the bad counter the good here.In this crime thriller, Michael Caine plays a real life British gangster named Jack Carter.
Michael Caine stars (in a brilliant performance) as Jack Carter, a tough & ruthless gangster from London who travels to Newcastle to investigate his brothers death, and uncovers the fact that he was murdered, so systematically sets out to avenge him by killing everyone responsible, no matter who, or how powerful, which ultimately puts him at odds against his own gang...Director Mike Hodges creates a unique atmosphere of menace, well capturing its time and place, making this a true time capsule of a film.
Michael Caine stars in this revenge crime drama as a Gangster from London who decides to look in to the suspicious death of his brother.his investigation ends up ruffling some feathers,and Jack becomes a target.i won't say anything else about the story.you'll have yo watch the movie to find out more.i' will say that this is not what you would call an action packed movie.it moves at a moderate pace.it's not boring.things are always happening,just not at a frenetic pace.and every scene occurs for a reason,even if it doesn't appear that way.at least that's the impression i felt.but it's really the acting that's the anchor here.Caine is great as the title character who won't give up,until he finds the answers.the supporting cast is also good.for me,Get Carter is a 7/10.
In some cases, this film is quite funny and you have been warned, its quite violent and nasty that it doesn't deserve to have a bad ending with Michael Caine's gangster character being regarded as a fallen hero..
In Mike Hodges' celebrated film 'Get Carter', Michael Caine plays a 1970s gangster searching for revenge for his dead brother against a backdrop of iconic Tyneside locations.
Carter Got His Gun. When his brother dies under the suspicious circumstances, tough and ruthless London gangster, Jack Carter (Michael Caine) goes to Newcastle to investigate his death.
Classic British crime thriller with Michael Caine as Jack Carter, an enforcer for the London mob who goes back to home to Newcastle to discover the reasons behind his brother's death.
Michael Caine is awesome as Jack Carter, and oozes charisma and style while simultaneously being the hardest character seen in film for a long time.
An excellent film starring Michael Caine who portrays a bespoked London-based gangster named Jack Carter who travels a town in northern England to avenge the death of his brother.