Get Carter (1971)

Directed by Mike Hodges. Starring Michael Caine, John Osborne, Ian Hendry, Bryan Mosley, Geraldine Moffat, George Sewell, Alun Armstrong, Petra Markham, Tony Beckley, Glynn Edwards, Dorothy White, Britt Ekland, Bernard Hepton, Rosemarie Dunham. [R]

London gangster Jack Carter (Caine) returns to his old stamping grounds in Newcastle to attend his brother’s funeral and get some information on what led to his demise. A tough, mean crime thriller, proficient and sadistic, so cold around the heart that it can be a tough go sometimes sorting through the overly convoluted plot and keeping the monochromatically amoral characters apart. This includes Carter himself, a remorseless brute on a mission, played with cool, spiteful precision by Caine in that grey area between anti-hero and outright villain, the sort of Limey lout who’d rather club a man to death with the butt of a shotgun than pull the trigger, and stare off dead-eyed with a phone to his ear while a nearly naked Britt Ekland writhes about in pleasure on the other end. Director Hodges brings a gritty kind of elegance to this underbelly tour, with a strong assist from its grubby, economically-ravaged locations and Wolfgang Suschitzky’s handheld camerawork. An American remake landed in 2000 starring Sylvester Stallone.

77/100