Get Carter (1971)

Starring: Michael Caine
Grade: B-

Get Carter is one of those movies that will have you obsessing over British lingo. Carter’s delivery of “Oh, you must be joking” or him being told, “Clever sod, aren’t you” are just a sample of the phrases I want to start using in my everyday life.

Summary

Gangster Jack Carter (Caine) sits at the house of his bosses Gerald (Terence Rigby) and Sid Fletcher (John Bindon). They are all with some women in a dark room, and they are looking at stills from pornographic films on a projector. As the stone-faced Carter pours himself a drink, Gerald tells Carter that he doesn’t want him going up north. They’re connected with the Newcastle mafia, and they don’t want him to screw it up. Gerald asks why he’s going, and Carter says it’s to find out what happened to his recently deceased brother Frank. Not wanting to hear it, Gerald reminds him that Frank is dead and gone, and the Newcastle boys won’t take kindly to someone from London poking his nose into their business. Undeterred, Carter responds, “Too bad” while lighting his cigarette. Even so, he tells Carter they’re killers just like him. Plus, the police seem satisfied, though Carter wonders when this has ever been good enough, which is a fair point. No matter what, he is going, and he takes a train to Newcastle soon after. Arriving at night, Carter goes straight to a bar and orders a pint of bitter in a thin glass. Some of the other bar patrons look at him. The bartender gets a call, and it turns out to be for Carter, so he goes over and takes it. It’s Margaret (Dorothy White). Carter wonders why she isn’t there at the bar, if Doreen (Petra Markham) is at the house, who is with Doreen, if he can see her, and if she will be there tomorrow. During the last question, Margaret hangs up on him. Later that night, Carter sneaks into Frank’s building, has a look around, takes a shotgun from the top of the dresser, lays the shotgun on the bed, and finds Frank in a casket. There, he covers Frank’s face with a cloth and leaves. He heads to the Las Vegas, a small hotel he is staying in temporarily. Though he won’t be staying there tonight because he will be staying with a friend, he still offers to pay the landlady in Edna (Rosemarie Dunham) anyway. She’s cool without it because he’s the first customer since Monday, but she takes it anyway when he offers her the cash.

The next morning, Carter watches as two men close up Frank’s casket, as Carter’s young niece Doreen shows up. Carter asks her if the police said anything. Apparently, they said Frank was drunk. She goes on about how she left school and works at Woolworth’s now. He asks if she’s going to live with Margaret, but she’s not. Actually, she doesn’t seem to have much of a plan. Carter suggests she go with him and his fiancée to South America, adding that Frank would have liked it. Carter, Doreen, and some others like Eddie (Godfrey Quigley) and Keith (Alun Armstrong) all watch as the funeral home workers put the casket in the hearse and drive off. Carter thanks Eddie for coming. The four get into the same car, and Keith talks about how surprised he was to hear Frank passed. Keith notes how he was always on time at work, as they used to work together at the Half Moon for years. Eddie talks about how calm Frank was and how they were with him for so long but then he ends up doing what he did, though he doesn’t say what it was directly. Carter, Doreen, Eddie, and Keith are the only people to go to the service at the church until Margaret shows up late. She has her head covered and has sunglasses on, so Carter has to ask Doreen for sure if it is Margaret and she confirms it. Right after, Margaret leaves in a haste, so Carter follows and stops her. He thought she wasn’t coming to the funeral, but she changed her mind. Even so, Carter wants to talk to her about Doreen. Margaret says she has nothing to do with Doreen, which confuses Carter because she was Frank’s girl ever since Doreen’s mother checked out. He thought she was closer to Doreen than anybody. Margaret denies this and talks about her own husband while trying to walk away, but Carter stops her again and asks who killed Frank. She doesn’t know anything, but he’s not done talking to her. So, they agree to meet up tomorrow at the Iron Bridge at 12PM. Next, Carter has a drink with Eddie, Keith, and Doreen at the bar. As Doreen stays silent, the others discuss the possibility of Frank killing himself. Keith is sure that Frank had no issues like that and doesn’t buy it. Carter questions when Frank ever drank whiskey. None of them know. Eddie just talks about how good of a guy he was.

Doreen flips out, throws her drink in Eddie’s face, accuses them of not knowing Frank, and storms out. Carter lets her go and offers to have another drink with them, but Eddie has to go to work. With this, Carter gives him some money to have his suit cleaned.

Keith works at the bar, so he stays. Carter tells Keith that if anyone asks for him to let him know. He’s staying at the Las Vegas behind the dance hall. Carter then asks if he knows a man called Albert Swift (Glynn Edwards), and Keith confirms. Swift comes in there a lot actually. Carter wants to find him, so Keith thinks he’s at the Newcastle Horserace because he frequents it. Carter went to school with Swift, so he thinks Swift will be a good source to find out what’s going on in this town. At the races, Swift sees Carter show up and dips. Instead, Carter sees and greets Eric Paice (Ian Hendry), who is surprised to see him. They chat and Carter talks about how he’s actually from there and how he’s visiting family, though adding that it would be nicer if there wasn’t a death in the family. Paice acts aloof and gives him his condolences. Changing the subject, Carter wants to know who he’s working for, bringing up Cliff Brumby (Bryan Mosley) and Cyril Kinnear (John Osborne). Paice walks around it, so Carter asks him if he knows Swift. Apparently, he doesn’t. Following the races, Carter tails Paice back to Kinnear’s house. He sneaks onto the property and sees one of Kinnear’s men taking a piss in a pond. Carter knocks him out with a branch. Next, he runs through the backyard but is spotted and chased. Even so, he is able to elude the men, and he sneaks into the house. One henchman named Ray runs into a room where Kinnear is playing cards and alerts them that Carter is here. Seconds after, Carter walks in and right past Paice. Kinnear doesn’t even turn to look at Carter and practically invites him over. He even has his girl Glenda (Geraldine Moffat) make him a scotch while telling Ray to “piss off”. Kinnear says Paice told him about Carter’s “bereavement”. He is aware it’s Carter’s brother, but he didn’t know Frank worked for one of his places. If Kinnear did know, he tells Carter he would have put him in a better place to work. Harry (Kevin Brennan) interrupts because he wants to get back to the card game, so Kinnear agrees to do so. Before they get back into it, Kinnear tells Glenda to give Carter the whole bottle of Scotch.

The others at the card game think Carter is leaving, but he tells them he’ll go when they lose, which won’t be long.

As the guys play, Glenda asks Carter if he knows Sid Fletcher. Carter confirms that he does, and he works for him, prompting the flirtatious Glenda to lay her head into his arm. She’s a bit drunk and talks aloud about how she met Sid last year when he was there on business to see Kinnear. After Kinnear wins the game, Carter goes to leave, and Kinnear tells him to drop by anytime. When he exits the room, Paice follows him and tells him he didn’t appreciate Carter showing up and neither did Kinnear, but Carter argues that Paice should have just told him who he was working for. When Paice brings up how Kinnear thinks Sid and Gerald wouldn’t like to hear that he’s been sticking his nose in their business, Carter agrees and tells him to save money on the phone call. Next, Carter goes to a junkyard to take a look at Frank’s car and asks the guy who works there what happened to it. The guy is defensive until Carter explains it’s his brother’s car, so he tells him Frank drove it into a river. However, the steering and brakes were fine. Frank was just drunk. Carter goes to Keith’s bar, and Keith asks him if he knows a man named Thorpe (Bernard Hepton). He was looking for Carter since he heard he was in town and even asked Keith where Carter was staying, though Keith tells Carter he didn’t reveal his spot, which he appreciates. Carter leaves to go back to his place at the Las Vegas and invites Keith to the spot. Before he leaves, the house singer kisses one of the bar patrons during her performance and the guy’s wife throws a drink in her face and starts a fight. Everyone crowds around to watch. Carter smiles while watching it too before exiting. During his walk, he sees Doreen in a restaurant with her friend. He knocks on the glass and has Doreen come outside to talk. She’s doing much better now, but she is going to live at her friend’s house at the Wilton estate over Carter’s offer of South America. He’s okay with it because they sound like a good family (“Church goers and all that”). Since he’s leaving tomorrow and isn’t sure he will be seeing her again, he gives her some money to get her hair done and leaves her with the parting advice of, “Don’t trust boys”.

Fair.

Upon getting back to the apartment, Edna gives Carter a package, and it’s Frank’s ashes. Following this, Carter calls his fiancée Anna (Britt Ekland) and has phone sex with her while he stares at Edna, who is sitting on a rocking chair and listening to the conversation. Anna goes crazy listening to him but stops once Gerald enters her bedroom, as she’s cheating on Gerald with Carter. Trying to keep up their affair, she refers to Carter as “Janet” on the phone while telling him that Gerald just walked in. Carter gets the deal and tells her to wait until Sunday for him when he gets back. The doorbell rings, and Carter knows it’s for him. It turns out to be Keith. He’s been beaten up by Thorpey’s men. There were four of them, and they were waiting for the both of them at the car park. Carter turns out the lights and stands in the doorway as Thorpey pulls up. He wants to talk, so Carter tells him to stay in the car, and he’ll listen from the outside. On behalf of someone he won’t say, Thorpey hands Carter a train ticket to get out of town. He tears it up in front him. The other guys in the car try to attack, but Carter takes the first one out by kicking the car door back when the guy is about to get out of the car, prompting the guy to go headfirst through the window. The driver starts going and one guy gets his foot caught when trying to get out of the car. He’s dragged down the street until he falls off. The car stops, the driver goes towards them while Thorpey runs in the opposite direction. Carter chases Thorpey into a night club and into the bathroom. Thorpey tries to hide in the stall, but Carter goes into the stall next to his and flushes Thorpey’s toilet to scare him into giving up. He walks Thorpey back to Keith and Edna. Edna doesn’t want to let Carter in because of the mess he’s caused. He apologizes but kind of forces his way back in because he doesn’t listen to her protesting. After Edna argues with some old woman neighbor next door because she knew Edna was going to bring trouble to the neighborhood, Edna walks back inside. Carter tells her to make them all some tea and he’ll tell her what he’s doing if she does so. He might even let her watch. Edna threatens to call the police, but he knows she won’t.

Passing a bottle of scotch between himself and Keith, Carter interrogates Thorpey to see who sent him. Thorpey gives up rather quickly that it was Brumby. Just as Edna walks in with tea for all of them, Keith wonders who Brumby is. Carter mentions that if he’s ever been in an arcade in West Sea, there’s a good chance it belongs to Brumby. Thorpey reveals that Brumby is living at a new place in Burnham on the Durham road, Pantiles. Edna demands to know what’s going on, but Carter walks around it, tells Keith to keep Thorpey away from the phone, and goes out.

The road to vengeance begins. If anyone is tied to Frank’s death in any sort of way, they better watch out for Jack Carter.

My Thoughts:

Ice cold and so grimy it nears hopelessness, the uncompromising Get Carter is filmmaker Mike Hodges’s gritty take on the sleazy and ruthless criminal underworld of 1970s England. Powered by a callous performance by Michael Caine as the “villain in the family” in antihero Jack Carter, this gangster film is considered to be among British cinema’s finest. Before the movie’s existence, a lot of English films tended to depict gangsters in a much more light-hearted way. Michael Caine and company decided to change all that with their adaptation of Jack’s Return Home, a novel created less than a year before the movie. In fact, the whole process of the novel being published and it turning into a finished film was around 10 months, which is quite the turnaround. Truth be told, the realism of the novel and its candid portrayal of the criminal life in England was too attractive to not be put on the big screen, so it really was a case of the right idea at just the right time. Coming out during a revolutionary time period in the film industry, where there was a serious pursuit for stories focused on naturalism, authenticity, darker realities that people find themselves in, and morally ambiguous characters coming to the forefront of importance, Get Carter was another movie that helped defined this early part of the decade. It’s not for everyone and it doesn’t strive for the “Hollywood” style of entertainment, but it succeeds in showcasing true criminal behavior and the characters that revel in it.

Almost all of Get Carter‘s appeal can be attributed to Michael Caine as the protagonist. Caine is a prolific actor, a gentleman, and a veteran of the field respected by everyone he’s come in contact with. Despite the praise he gets, it still seems as though his range isn’t talked about enough. Because of his real-life personality and his more recent work where he has settled into a calming voice of reason or sympathetic presence in a lot of features, we forget about Michael Caine in his prime and how damn good he was as an action hero, womanizer, or even that of a ruthless gangster. As Jack Carter, the actor looks like himself, but he is the furthest thing from Michael Caine than you may have ever seen before. A true transformation, Caine is unrecognizable in the metaphorical sense, as he scours across the scene of his old stomping grounds in Newcastle, possessing an aura of brutishness due to a black-hearted demeanor and a constant icy cold stare. It’s not that Carter enjoys his job per say, but he’s fine with who he’s become. He’s well aware that he’s the black sheep of his family because of his criminal lifestyle, but it doesn’t affect him in the slightest. It suits him. The only thing that does affect him is his brother’s death. Frank was the good one and didn’t deserve his outcome. Carter knows that and anyone close to him knows that. Though his death is ruled as a drunk driving incident, Carter knows Newcastle and all the gangsters that encompass the area like the back of his hand, which is why he has this hunch that it was more than that. What’s interesting about Carter is that though he’s more than likely a hatchet man for his bosses Gerald and Sid Fletcher, he cannot be controlled by them. In the opening of the film, they are aware of his intentions to travel to Newcastle to find out about Frank’s death, but they just try to steer him away because they don’t want him messing up their relations to the bosses over there. Even so, Carter tells them, “Too bad” while lighting his cigarette. He’s more than willing to cause a stir and will face whatever consequences that come with it.

For a such a ruthless main character and known gangster, the only redeemable values Jack Carter possesses is his love and sympathy for Frank and his family. Carter himself is beyond saving, but he’ll be damned if one of the good ones have gone down, and no one will answer for it. It’s like Carter knows he’s going to Hell at some point in his life, but he’s taking all the existing demons down with him as a way to make up for it. Even with this silver lining however, Carter goes about this well-intentioned goal of his as only a true gangster would. Fighting fire with soullessness, Carter faces the most powerful of criminals in the area face-to-face and makes his presence known around town just to get his answers. He knows Eric Paice isn’t telling him everything in their initial interaction, but he doesn’t pry because Carter isn’t a talker. He’s an intimidator and will do certain things to scare you or make sure he stays on your mind. In one badass character-defining moment, Paice tries to act confident with Carter until Carter has him remove his sunglasses. With just this moment between them, Paice doesn’t give him the same eye contact and becomes noticeably fidgety. It’s all Carter needs to confirm his suspicions, adding that line of saying Paice’s eyes look like “Piss holes in the snow” for good measure. Paice will transfer the word that Carter is in town, and Carter knows it, but that’s all he needs to let everyone know that he means business. This understated approach of pure intimidation and his emanation of violence with just a few lines, or aggressive conversational tactics, speak volumes in Caine’s performance and it brings the realistic and vengeful depiction of a true gangster to life. The novel in which the film is based on includes a lot more reasoning and backstory as to why Carter is so focused on avenging his brother’s death, giving him a decent amount of sympathy from the reader to at least somewhat give reasoning to his callousness in interrogating and attacking the underworld of England like a one-man army. In the film, further divulged information about Carter’s childhood and relationship isn’t given, but it’s arguably not needed.

With how determined Carter is from the outset to find out about Frank’s death and how willing he is to face all of these other villains and suspicious characters with unbridled confidence and soulless violence, it’s enough to show you how much Frank meant to him. Him getting more violent with each person is just a testament to how far gone he is as a person but is used dually as an example as to how much he does care, in a twisted way of course. Again, this is just how these morally ambiguous, antihero characters work and why we can still root for them, even if we know they are going too far and are dirtying up their inner selves by doing it. Remember, Keith helped Carter and got his ass kicked for holding Thorpey for him at the hotel after Thorpey’s guys came to get him out of there. When he was bedridden with injuries and Carter came to see Keith to confirm Albert Swift’s location, he denies knowing Thorpey’s guys were going to come back for him and gives him some money with, “Here, get yourself a course in karate”. To add to Carter’s amoral background, Keith tells him that Frank talked shit about him, and he accuses Carter of fucking Frank’s wife, mentioning how Frank didn’t even know if Doreen was his. Carter doesn’t give a fuck about any of this and just leaves. This is a real antihero at work. We see it in vigilante thrillers like Death Wish and cop movies like Dirty Harry, but with Get Carter, we’re following a bad guy who is facing OTHER bad guys and it’s endearing, bringing out the fire in the audience because we want to see “our” bad guy get his answers. Even though the character himself would never care for such a classification of his actions, the events of the narrative do make him look heroic, despite how violent he gets. You’re telling me that you didn’t feel somewhat satisfied when he stabs Albert Swift outside the bar when Swift reveals what happened that fateful night? What about the fantastically solemn climax on the beach? I sure as hell felt good with it, especially after Swift told Carter that he in fact told Paice that Frank was Carter’s brother when everything was going down and he just responded, “Good”. Hey, Paice pulled Doreen for Kinnear’s film. He had what was coming to him.

Look, we know someone forcing an overdose on another for revenge is certifiably insane, but a guy like Jack Carter is not looking to be cheered on. He’s a gangster through and through. With this, one can argue that Jack Carter could be the most accurate example of the term “antihero” that there is. Carter is looking to make people pay. On one hand, his actions are deplorable and only a bastard could think of such brutality to inflict on others. On the other hand, the revelation of the underage Doreen being coerced into performing in a porno is grounds for a violent response. As bad as Carter undeniably is, even he can’t believe what he’s seeing. Just watch that scene after he sleeps with Glenda and views the movie on the projector, not knowing the contents of what it is. Look into his deadened eyes watching the moment Doreen appears onscreen. In that moment, we can’t help but feel the same fury that is brought out of Carter. It changes the urgency of his mission. He was motivated to begin with, but this scene takes it to a whole other level of rage-fueled vengeance. The existence of this “film” he comes across is so raw and unrelenting that it shocks the viewer as much as him. Mind you, this is a guy who is a bastard himself, but even he can’t help but tear up as his niece is taken advantage of. There’s something about the silence of this scene, and just watching the actor react to such a vile revelation, that separates Get Carter from other similarly themed revenge thrillers. This is the tipping point that does it, the depressing, visceral, and dark tipping point that incites an anger that has the viewer begging for Carter to find every last son of a bitch involved and setting them all ablaze for what they did. You can’t help but put yourself in his shoes and feel your anger boiling to the surface in the same manner it does for our protagonist. It’s like how Carter yells at Brumby before beating the hell out of him and tossing him onto a car, “How would you have liked it if it was your daughter being poked in that film?”. It brings the animal out and now, he’s even more determined to make everyone pay for their carelessness and their evil actions.

Sure, Carter wasn’t around Frank and his family a lot, but it was more because of their different paths in life. He distanced himself for their benefit and didn’t want to involve Frank and his family in his lifestyle, which is possibly why he feels the need to do something now to make up for lost time, though this is more an interpretation admittedly. For the record, the 2000 remake of Get Carter explains this perspective a lot better and allows that Jack Carter to have a little more guilt for his lack of interaction with his brother’s family. The original doesn’t go too far into that direction, leaving it up to the audience to come to this conclusion by themselves. Even so, Frank ended up working at one of Kinnear’s places and wound up dead. He wasn’t entirely innocent, but it’s not like he was high up on the food chain and causing issues. It wasn’t until Brumby showed Frank the film where Doreen is basically molested that causes Frank to threaten going to the police, which resulted in this turn of events. Now, only an antagonistic character and a true remorseless killer can stop these types of villains in the way they deserve to be dealt with. Unfortunately, like a true antihero with these noted villainous tendencies, Carter himself will have to answer for the sins he committed just as well, even if he was about to toss that gun in the water to move on in life. Oddly enough, Get Carter‘s conclusion does kind of make it all better and pays it off the only way a story like this should be paid off.

It seemed as though the people involved in the production looked to the famous quote from Norm Macdonald for inspiration: “Now this might strike some of you as harsh, but I believe everyone involved in this story should die”.

It’s kind of funny in hindsight that if Carter was able to get to Swift at the races just a tad bit earlier before Swift ran away, then 75% of the story would have been removed because Swift literally told him everything. That would have saved Carter a lot of time. I also couldn’t help but laugh at how despite Paice and Con using their van to knock Carter’s car into the river, he magically has another car when he heads over to beat down Brumby in the next scene. A criminal always finds a way, doesn’t he? In addition, the scene with Glenda drunk driving Carter while talking about how the “Demon King” dispatched her to come get him really worked well in context. In the Sylvester Stallone remake, they attempt it again in the lobby of a hotel and it’s cringeworthy to say the least. It goes to show you how important laying out certain scenes are and how specific dialogue in context doesn’t translate well when it’s misdirected, misunderstood, or just not handled well. In a remake, you need to know what to retain and what to remove, and this conversation was one of them. This interaction between Glenda and Carter while she’s driving like a maniac puts her literally and figuratively in the driver’s seat and he’s even a bit worried (“We’re here” – “Thank God”). In the remake, the dialogue in an American setting with how it’s delivered just didn’t work. Actually, it was flat-out strange and borderline alienating compared to the rest of the movie. On the negative side of things, there are some notable dead spots and added details inserted that seem to overly complicate things or stretch out the story further. Unfortunately, most of it isn’t remotely interesting and more importantly, don’t seem necessary or add to the entertainment value. Did Frank really like Margaret like that? I’m with Carter. I don’t buy it. Brumby’s daughter throwing a house party and Carter’s interaction with him leading to nothing was a shoulder shrugger, Brumby’s lies about Kinnear killing Frank to try and motivate Carter to kill him and Carter not falling for it felt like a placeholder that didn’t lead to anything substantial (actually, the only thing interesting about Brumby was his name), and Carter finding time to fuck Edna AND Glenda seem weirdly placed because it just makes you wonder why he’s in the mood for it with all of this going on.

Considering his goals, I just can’t help but feel that these sequences didn’t fit. It fits the sleazy vibe of the movie, but not the events of the story. Then again, it was a pretty entertaining moment seeing a naked Carter force Con and Peter out of the hotel at gunpoint. It was one of those times you can call him a “gangster” in a positive way because that was just badass, as well as comical. For a directing and editing standpoint, I also did find the juxtaposition of Glenda driving stick shift in the car with Carter with the two having sex to be a genius creative decision. She works the nob like a pro in more ways than one, yeah Along with the more serious violence involved, I loved the shootout on the ferry with Carter taking on Paice, Con, and Peter (“Are you coming in or you gonna piss about all day”), especially with that triple closeup of Carter before he shoots Peter on the roof of the boat. He deserved it after doubling down on Con’s snitching to Gerald about Carter and Anna.

With a naturalistic feel in its presentation and characters, along with Roy Budd’s minimalist score that contains one of my favorite movie themes ever in the bare bones version of “Carter Takes a Train”, Get Carter is an amoral and soulless revenge thriller that will make you feel dirty after watching it. It’s a bad guy taking on worse people in a fight to the death, and it satisfies with its bloodthirsty focus. Michael Caine is incredible too. Even so, it’s far from great. It’s much more complicated than it has any right to be, it slogs along at times, there is a lot less action than you’d like there to be, and there is just an overabundance of characters that are nowhere near the protagonist in terms of being genuinely interesting enough to want to know more about or have us care as to why there are so many interweaving plotlines that effect their lives too. The exception to this is Kinnear, as John Osborne’s quiet cunning, understated power in his confidence, and inconvenienced demeanor when faced with opposition is a highly memorable performance in one of the playwright’s very few acting roles. With all of this in mind, I’m going to admit something that will be controversial. The 2000 remake starring Sylvester Stallone is neck and neck with the 1971 original in terms of quality. It’s because this film, as good as it is, isn’t nearly as amazing as it’s made out to be. It’s either that or the remake is over-hated.

Take your pick.

Fun Fact: MGM executives originally wanted Telly Savalas for the role of Cliff Brumby, but they went with Bryan Mosely after seeing him in Far from The Madding Crowd. Mike Hodges wrote the screenplay with Ian Hendry in mind for Jack Carter, but producer Michael Klinger already signed up Michael Caine for the role before Hodges knew it.