Michael Caine plays the title character, an ice-cold, efficiently lethal London mobster investigating his brother's death in the seedy Newcastle underworld. Based on the novel 'Jack's Return Home' by Ted Lewis.
'I know you didn’t kill him, I know!' So screams Michael Caine's character Jack Carter, as he stabs to death a participant in the Newcastle blue movie racket that led ... more >
'I know you didn’t kill him, I know!' So screams Michael Caine's character Jack Carter, as he stabs to death a participant in the Newcastle blue movie racket that led to the death of his brother. Here stands Get Carter in the line of great gangster movies. No attention to motivation, lacking any post-Tarantino quips, yet nonetheless utterly compelling. Based on the novel Jack’s Return Home by Ted Klinger, Mike Hodge's debut film charts London heavy Jack Carter's Sisyphus like quest to avenge the killing of his brother, and he almost succeeds. Caine is sublimely cast as the eponymous character, contrasting sharply with his sugary sixties persona as The Ipcress File's Harry Palmer had similarly provided a welcome antidote to the macho heroics of Sean Connery's James Bond. Violence and whiskey also ooze from the pores of playwright John Osbourne, appearing as a honeycombed gangland boss (providing EastEnder's script writers with the inspiration for Jack Dalton). The ending set a precedent for later gangster flicks, notably Bob Hoskins in The Long Good Friday; indeed Hodge's film, with its bleak panorama of pre-industrial Newcastle, looks forward to the fall out of the seventies and the anger of post-industrial Britain portrayed in its ideological successor. < less
Mike Hodges' Get Carter is a tough and thoroughly compulsive crime thriller that delivers the gangland goods with great aplomb. Michael Caine is Jack Carter, the Londo... more >
Mike Hodges' Get Carter is a tough and thoroughly compulsive crime thriller that delivers the gangland goods with great aplomb. Michael Caine is Jack Carter, the London-based villain returning to his native Newcastle to bury his brother, who sets about antagonising the local gangsters until he finds out who was the killer. Caine is suave, sadistic and sexy, but then everyone here is pretty nasty. Playwright John Osborne appears as one of the camp Newcastle bosses, while the late Bryan Mosley (Coronation Street's Alf Roberts) also has a key role.
