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Get Carter (1971)
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by Warner Home Video
Sales Rank: 21010
Price: $19.98
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For <i>Get Carter</i>, the able Michael Caine checked in his likable working-class-bloke persona to play a very unlikable working-class bloke, London gangster Jack Carter. Heading "up north" to get to the bottom of the recent death of his brother, he runs afoul of the local color, who don't appreciate his meddling. Not content to accept the police report of suicide, Carter begins investigating. He encounters the local mob boss, his sleazy chauffeur with eyes like "piss holes in the snow," and the lovely town porn star. The film moves along at a leisurely pace, until Carter finds out the grim truth. The final third of the film has Jack Carter on the vengeance path. No one in this film gets a happy ending. When it's over, you feel as though you need to wipe the soot off yourself and go stand under a sun lamp. The British board of tourism would prefer you didn't watch this film. <i>--Kristian St. Clair</i>
Viewer Reviews
et Carter* is a five-star written, acted, produced, directed example of Filmic Art, without doubt. It is a film that couldn't come out of America, so that encourages a certain fascination as well. It is also a source of self-examination for people, such as myself, who have roots in Newcastle.
Newcastle (-upon-Tyne) was a place of coal and iron extraction for centuries. Arguably it gave birth to the Industrial Revolution. It's inhabitants, Geordies they're called, when they weren't mining coal or pounding metal, bore the brunt of warfare with Scotland. The town and hinterland bred people known for two things: hard work and high disease resistance (as my father told it). My grandfather hailed from there.
Watching et Carter* reminds me of how reasonable it was that a young man, having survived years of trench warfare in WW1, would take off to London and never look back. And how a generation later, one of his sons would light out across an ocean after WW2 and laugh softly at the thought of buying a return ticket. It also makes it clear to me how fitting it is that a character like Carter was a Geordie.
Newcastle was a great place to find the sort of men who understood violence as Work and sex as visceral Redemption. Much has been made of how unstoppable, relentless, even 'robotic' Carter becomes when certain information comes to light regarding his brothers death. Partly that's bred-in-the-bone *work ethic* operating at full, and partly that's something peculiar to the British Isles.
There's a deep streak of socially condoned violence in the cause of 'justice' in British Cinema. Certain violations of the social code sanction the most thorough-going and brutal response - that's not peculiar to British filmaking. What is (so far as I've ascertained) peculiar to British film is an expectation of *acquiescence* from the offender. The avenger is expected to destroy and the offender is expected to know that they need to be destroyed. Every shooting, stabbing, scrotum-scrunching, 'accident' arrangement and cranium-crushing from that point is vigorously executed and weakly fended-off. This theme pops up in other movies of ilk nature (The Limey and The General, for example).
Once Carter realizes the full extent of the wrong that's been dealt, he feels no pity for the objects of his wrath. To him, and to themselves, they are needful of destruction. Problem is, Carter himself lives on ethically shaky ground. When he rejects the better judgement of his gangster boss and peers to "think again" (in the so-named first chapter of the dvd) about 'nosing about' in Newcastle, and when he refuses to turn aside in his pursuit of personal justice, his moorings are cast aside completely. Carter himself becomes needful of destruction.
There are scenes in this movie that strike with unexpected force.
Chapter "With Eric at the races" defines the distance between the way younger hoods interract and the way it is between 'lifers'.
During the chapter called "Country House Call" the character Glenda (Geraldine Moffatt) stabs the viewer in the face with the sort of smoking-hot look of challenge that never fails to bring out 'the caveman' in a fully functional male. It was heartwarming to see that recorded on film for posterity. This scene also contains an exchange that sums up race relations at that juncture.
Carter puts paid to the notion that phone-sex was solely a thing of the 1980's in the chapter called "Long Distance Sexy" (with actresses Brett Ekland and Rosemary Carter). This marks the first and only time I've seen a man conduct a simultaneous double-pleasuring/seduction in film. Utilization of the rocking chair was a small stroke of creative genius as well. Very effective in a warmly understated way.
"Drink up and Die" and scenes subsequent to that chapter use the novocastrian landscape with brutal eloquence.
Michael Caines 'Carter' is not an 'ultimate-fighter' bad-boy. He handles firearms awkwardly and his close-quarters-combat techniques are of the 'brawler' variety, but it is the '70's and it is Great Britain, so that's to be expected. He's only "comparatively" more clever than his prey. He is however a superior gangster for any era and considerably more focused that Stallones 'Carter' (of the Y2K remake).
This is a film not to be missed, easily dismissed or forgotten. Enjoy!
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Get Carter (1971)
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