Get Carter (Remake) (2000)

Starring: Sylvester Stallone, Rachael Leigh Cook, Mickey Rourke, Michael Caine, Alan Cumming, John C. McGinley, and Gretchen Mol, with a voice cameo from Tom Sizemore
Grade: B

As said in the review for the older film this one took inspiration from, Geraldine reciting Glenda’s drunken “Demon King” speech did not work like it did in the original movie. It was funny seeing Stallone’s Carter rip off her wig though.

Summary

A quote from Robert Browning opens the film stating, “That’s all we expect of man, this side the grave: his good is – knowing he is bad”.

In Las Vegas, mob enforcer Jack Carter (Stallone) catches Jim Davis (Mark Boone Junior) on the street following a chase because Davis owes money to Carter’s boss Fletcher (Sizemore). In a room somewhere, Carter beats the hell out of Davis while Carter’s friend and co-worker Con (McGinley) questions why he’s so adamant about going to his little brother Ritchie’s funeral considering he hasn’t seen Ritchie in 4-5 years. Knowing that Ritchie left behind a wife and daughter, Carter feels he owes his brother this at the very least. Davis tries to leave because of their little “therapy session”, so Carter threatens to take things to the “next level”. Davis laughs because it sounds like a catchphrase, so Carter hits him twice more. Con pulls Carter back to calm him down, but then he punches Davis too. At the same time, he tells Carter that Fletcher has made it clear he wants Carter to stay in Vegas. Even so, he tells Con he will be back in a couple of days, and he takes a train back home to Seattle.

In Seattle, he settles into his hotel. Through his unpacking, we see the guns he’s brought as well. The next day, he’s at the funeral, though he stands far away from everyone else. Ritchie’s wife Gloria (Richardson) notices Carter and walks over to him. Immediately, she gives him shit for not being there until now. Carter just takes it and asks if Gloria’s daughter Doreen (Cook) is around. Gloria confirms and walks back towards the service, so he joins her and the others. As they stand there, Doreen walks away. After the service, Carter approaches Eddie (Johnny Strong), a guy who used to work with Ritchie at a bar called “The George”. He asks Eddie if Ritchie was involved in any criminal activity, but he wasn’t. Ritchie wasn’t that type of guy. Next, Carter goes over to his niece Doreen. He tries to talk to her and give his condolences, but she doesn’t want to hear it from him, as she only knows Carter from pictures and nothing else. He sees Geraldine (Rhona Mitra) there as well and approaches her, saying she stood out in the crowd. It may have been because of her stupid haircut, but this isn’t confirmed. Regardless, she walks around how she knows Ritchie when he questions her about it. All she reveals is that she met him at a bar. Then, she gets into her car before saying anything else to the stranger that is Carter. At the luncheon afterwards, Carter is still asking Eddie questions and Gloria yells at him to stop. Doreen storms out of the room and it causes a bit of a scene. She sits on the front porch to smoke, and Carter joins her. She makes a sarcastic comment about him roughing her up, implying that she knows a little bit about what Carter does for a living. Carter starts to smoke too, but Doreen wants to be alone. Getting the hint and acknowledging the fact that they don’t know each other all that well, Carter just tells her that he’s staying at the Mercer Hotel for the weekend and he’s available to help her in any way if need be. Following a brief period of silence between them, she mentions that Ritchie didn’t drink, and he definitely wouldn’t drink and drive.

Carter wonders what she thinks happened, but it doesn’t matter because he’s dead. With this, she leaves and tells Carter to tell Gloria she’ll be home later.

Fletcher calls Carter and demands he come back to Vegas, but Carter just hangs up. Back inside the house, Carter comments on this figurine of a cat on the table to Gloria. Carter and Ritchie had it since they were kids, and they would hide stuff in it all the time from their mom. He thinks she knew but she didn’t really care. Changing the subject, Carter asks how their marriage was before Ritchie’s death, and if Ritchie started drinking, pointing out how Eddie and Doreen both said he wasn’t a drinker. She’s bothered by Carter caring all of a sudden and she dresses him down, adding that he doesn’t fix things, he breaks them. Following this, Carter calls Con from his car, and Con wants him to come back as soon as possible. Fletcher just yelled at him, and people are starting to talk about Carter and Audrey (Mol). Carter questions if those who are talking got the info from Con himself, but he denies it and tells Carter he’s been covering his ass. Carter goes to The George to see owner Cliff Brumby (Caine). Ritchie used to run the place for Brumby. Carter enters the back office to speak to Brumby and introduces himself. After Brumby talks about how good of a guy Ritchie was, Carter asks how long he ran the place for. Apparently, he ran it since the beginning, so about five years. There weren’t any known problems that Ritchie ran into during this timeframe. As Carter goes through the pictures of Ritchie’s family around the office, the two both agree that Ritchie doesn’t seem to be the guy to get drunk and go out driving in a rainstorm. Cutting to the chase after Brumby asks where this is going, Carter thinks someone took Ritchie out and he doesn’t think Brumby is telling him everything. Brumby gets defensive and starts getting in Carter’s face, but Carter doesn’t budge and has him sit down after a subtle threat. They discuss certain details leading up to Ritchie’s death, like how the cops never asked to see the security tapes because Ritchie was drunk driving. With this, Carter is given the security tape of the night in question.

Brumby asks if he talked to Geraldine, Ritchie’s side girl. This shocks Carter to his core. Also, Carter doesn’t realize it, but he did meet her at the funeral. Next, Carter goes to a bar to talk to Cyrus Paice (Rourke). Geraldine is with him when Carter approaches, and her face instantly clicks in his head as the girl he met at the funeral. She’s just not wearing the wig from earlier. That was the difference. Carter outs her as Geraldine, so she goes to the upstairs part of the bar. Cyrus heard about Ritchie and tells Carter, “You got my deepest condolences and all that shit”.

Carter walks with Cyrus as they discuss Carter still working with Fletcher, and how Cyrus has created this successful internet porn website company with some “freak” and a “foreign guy”. When they get into his upstairs office, Geraldine leaves for them to talk. They get up close and personal after some comments, and they look like they’re about to fight until Carter asks Cyrus to take off his sunglasses so he can see his eyes. He says they look like “Cat piss in the snow”. If you remember in the original, Carter told Eric Paice they looked like “Piss holes in the snow”. A lot of piss talk. Maybe that’s why Cyrus’s sunglasses are piss yellow. Anyway, one of Cyrus’s guys follows Carter into the kitchen of the bar, and Carter beats his ass. Just then, Cyrus takes Geraldine by force to the car. She insists she doesn’t know Carter, but it doesn’t matter to him. Carter watches and tails them. Cyrus drives to a country club where an attendant has to let them through the gate. Once Cyrus drives through, Carter pays the attendant $100 and drives through as well. Carter walks onto a golf course and sees Cyrus speaking to wealthy mogul Jeremy Kinnear (Cummings) who is playing golf. Once they are done talking, Cyrus throws Kinnear’s golf club. Cyrus leaves, so Carter approaches Kinnear. He brings up his brother’s death and doesn’t get into specifics, so Kinnear is a bit confused and weirded out. Carter subtly threatens him, so they can talk in private. While walking to the golf cart, Kinner talks about his computer company being worth a lot of money. Once they get on the golf cart, Carter mentions their mutual acquaintance being Cyrus. Following some more threats, Kinnear admits he has trouble focusing on his personal life with everything going on, so Cyrus pulls women for him so he can keep his image up. Kinnear tries his own intimidation tactics with Carter by relating a metaphor about the act of playing golf to making a problem go away. Privately, Kinnear calls Cyrus and is flipping out because of Carter. Kinnear got Cyrus online in the first place when he started his porn website. All Kinnear wanted was for his name to be away from it, but Cyrus already screwed him on that. In addition, Kinnear doesn’t know or care about Ritchie’s murder.

He just wants Carter gone. He doesn’t say kill him. He just wants him “away”, and he also wants Cyrus to go away as well.

That night at the hotel, Carter calls Audrey. When he gets back to Vegas, he wants them both to get out of there for good. Unfortunately, she doesn’t think she can do this anymore with Carter, as being with Fletcher is her job. Even so, Carter gives her advice to leave anyway. Fletcher starts yelling for her in the other room, so she cuts the conversation short. Carter goes out to see Gloria, and she admits that her and Doreen have become almost strangers to each other. She actually doesn’t even know where she went today. She does ease up around Carter for changing as a person, and he appreciates it, though she does admit he might be a little too late considering all that has happened. Back at the hotel, Carter watches the security tape and notices Eddie talking to Geraldine. So, he goes to The George and asks Eddie where Geraldine lives. He acts like he can’t hear Carter because of the music, so he takes him in his car. While he drives, he asks Eddie if he knows Doreen. He says he only knows her a little bit but points out Geraldine’s place to cut the conversation short. He has Eddie stay in the car, and he goes up to her apartment. He breaks in and has her roommate point out the room Geraldine is in. He walks in and immediately asks Geraldine what Ritchie was to her. Again, she is sticking to her story of just meeting him at a bar. Though he gets in her face when she tries to leave, he tells her he’s not here to hurt her. He just wants to know what happened. Finally, she admits Ritchie wanted her to leave with him (possibly to New York or somewhere else) because him and Gloria weren’t getting along so well and were on the verge of divorce. Sadly, Geraldine didn’t want to, she went to the bar to say goodbye to Ritchie, and he followed her out. He made a big scene outside the bar, and she heard he got pretty drunk. Carter is shocked. He drives back to his hotel and notices a car behind him parked and waiting for him. He approaches it, and it’s Thorpey (John Cassini). He’s in the backseat with two henchmen in the front. He wants to talk with Carter, so Carter tells him to stay in the car, and he’ll listen from the outside.

Thorpey gives him a first-class plane ticket for Alaska Airlines. He has been asked to make sure Carter gets on the plane tonight. Carter says that whatever he’s being paid, it’s not enough. He drops the plane ticket on the ground. As soon as he does, the driver gets out to attack but Carter bashes his head through the car window, disarms him, and holds the gun to his head so the guy in the passenger’s seat can’t make a move. Thorpey runs out of the car and steals another to drive away. The guy puts his gun down, so Carter throws the other guy down, steals their car, and chases after Thorpey. They drive all over the city until he forces Thorpey to crash outside some factory. He demands a name, and he blames Brumby. Carter goes right back to The George, and Eddie tells Carter that Brumby is in the back. Brumby has no idea about the plane ticket thing, but Carter demands to know what Ritchie had on Brumby. Brumby insists he was friends with Ritchie, but Carter doesn’t believe him and points his gun at him. With this, Brumby admits he owed some money for the club and got a loan from Cyrus. The slate would be wiped clean however if he got Carter out of town. He still assures Carter that Ritchie was his friend, and he would never try to kill him. The wild goose chase is now in full effect. Despite his own life being threatened however, Carter will not leave until someone (or everyone) answers for Ritchie’s death.

My Thoughts:

In the late 90s and early 2000s, Sylvester Stallone went through an infamous career slide, taking on a series of productions that killed his leading man status and box office dominance. As a huge fan of the actor, I’ll still argue with anyone that this period of his career was not nearly as bad as Hollywood pundits made it seem. Confidently, I can say that each movie still had varying degrees of entertainment value and positive highlights to take away from, no matter how poor the overall feature was. Many point to Cop Land being the first movie to start his trend downwards, but this was never fair. Sure, it wasn’t a smash hit, but it made money, it might be one of Stallone’s greatest non-Rocky performances ever, and the movie as a whole was fantastic. Granted, Driven and Avenging Angelo were not his best, but D-Tox was an underrated thriller. In-between all of this is the forgotten remake of the 1971 British gangster movie Get Carter. You may call me bias because of my fandom, but this remake was a lot better than people give it credit for. It’s staunchly different than the original film in terms of style and tone, so fans of the original will find the production as a whole particularly jarring. Even so, this remake on the dark revenge story does succeed with its early 2000s “Hollywood” style, packed with action and a sense of hope that did not exist in the original film. Though the latter was a big part of the first movie’s appeal, it’s just one of the many changes made to separate this remake from the original to help it stand on its own two feet. In doing so, this Get Carter remake is just as hard-hitting and violent, but an underrated Sylvester Stallone performance grounds the film into making it something entirely its own thing. In some instances, it gets just as good, if not better, than the original movie it was inspired by.

Though he doesn’t quite wear his suit like Michael Caine did all those years ago as Jack Carter, Stallone’s version of the protagonist succeeds in other ways. Utilizing his action hero capabilities, he turns the antihero into less of a villain and more of a sympathetic and remorseful protagonist. Previously, Carter was a soulless bastard who was too far gone to be saved, which is why he was the perfect man to take down even worse people. There is a serious power and benefit to being a gangster in a quest for vengeance, and it aligns very well with the opening quote of the film in that the Carter character knowing he is bad gives him the ability to go as far as he wants in pursuit of his goal, something that a regular hero might not be willing to do. Though this Robert Browning quote is exemplified with the original, it still works but to a lesser degree with Stallone’s take on the character. Now, I’m not sure if it’s an ego thing or whatever else, but it does seem like Stallone is hesitant to take the role in the darker fashion that the original was known for and this is why the remake is a such a stark contrast to the original. Stallone and screenwriter David McKenna work to keep the violence where it should be, but the change is in the heart of the character and story, with Carter being a sorrowful person looking to make up for lost time. It’s a role containing a lot more depth than what we saw prior. In one scene, Carter can console Doreen after she reveals the devastating truth of what happened to her, and you can’t help but tear up with the two characters while Carter holds her and tells her that it isn’t her fault (a scene Stallone absolutely brings it in I might add). In another scene, he scares the living daylights out of Eddie with a statement like, “Because If I had been here, this never would have gone down. Now, I gotta make it right” and you believe him. You believe in his earnestness to inflict pain and avenge these people, despite him showcasing his softer side at times. In the original, Caine’s Carter NEVER showed this type of vulnerability. He did care for Doreen and his brother Frank’s family, but he was still a gangster with a hardened outer shell that would rarely break for anyone or anything.

During his interactions with Doreen, he didn’t try to win her over. He was respectful, offered her advice and whatnot, and he gave her money the last time he saw her. That was it. He knew he was too removed from the family to start a closer familial relationship with her, so he did the best he could with the time given before going about behind the scenes burning Newcastle to the ground. In this remake of Get Carter, Stallone, who can’t help but play a more heroic version of the mob enforcer, uses his personal investigation of his brother Ritchie’s death as a way to rekindle his relationship with that side of the family, or really try to start one in the first place. For all intents and purposes, it’s actually done well. As an actor, Stallone plays sorrowful and guilt-ridden better than most, which is why I enjoyed what he did in D-Tox as well. There is something about his sullen expression, his understanding of who he is to Doreen and Gloria, and how he is not in a position to call shots or demand anything from them because he was never there previously that endears us to this take on Carter. It makes him a lot more likable in his angry pursuit. Because of his job as a mob enforcer or “financial adjuster” as he tells Doreen, he is classified as an antihero, but the performance and the way Carter carries himself, while trying to make up for everything, turns him into a regular hero in short order. Really, it’s a cool path to take this Americanized version of the story. It makes it a little different while still retaining the violence. If Stallone did play the role similarly to how Michael Caine did all those years back, critics and fans alike would have given him even less credit and would call the movie an outright copy. Why even put together a straight remake if you’re not going to change anything? Shot-for-shot remakes are the biggest wastes of money in cinema, and I have no idea why they exist. Going in this direction with different attitude makes the old idea into something new. All they are asking is for audiences to keep an open mind, which unfortunately they did not do.

On the flip side, if Stallone wasn’t Jack Carter and was just someone else, this film would have been treated like any run-of-the-mill revenge movie, it would be classified as a regular Stallone action vehicle, and it would be forgotten within the year. With the backing of what the original film did, it welcomes built-in attention for what could be a basic action movie, into a remake of what many consider to be a classic and inviting people to see how they did. With this, the hope is to succeed at doing an American version of the story, renewing interest in the older movie, and giving Stallone some buzz. Granted, it didn’t work out, but I just can’t see why. They make Jack Carter a more compelling, three-dimensional character and they are lambasted for the attempt. It’s true that the original Carter was black-hearted and this was the point, but I just don’t hate what they did here. At this point, it just makes me think that it didn’t matter what they did with this movie. They were going to hate on it no matter what. Considering the critical thrashing Stallone was taking at that time, one wonders if some bigwig just had it out for him because he couldn’t buy a good review until 2006’s Rocky Balboa.

In defense of the detractors of 2000’s Get Carter, it is unapologetically the prototypical example of a late 90s and early 2000s thriller. It’s frenetically edited, hyper-stylized, visually jarring and fitting of the early internet age with its odd camera tricks, Moby is on the soundtrack, the “Carter Takes a Train” theme is remixed with what sounds like Curtis Mayfield’s “Pusherman” but isn’t, and it’s all-around totally over produced. If a viewer isn’t prepared for it or is unaware of this era of film, many may find themselves removed from the story completely because of how stylized it is. In the present however, the remake ages well and it comes off as nostalgic because they just don’t do these types of visuals anymore, despite it being the norm back then. Like most action movies from this era of Hollywood, it’s visually stimulating to keep an unfocused viewer’s attention, especially during scenes that could drag. Nevertheless, it’s so overdone that most purists would balk at some of the audacious decisions made to make the imagery as memorable as possible because there are times where it does NOT fit the moment. Sometimes it works like in the elevator fight scene, but sometimes, the decisions effect the tone greatly. Before the film settles into what it’s supposed to be, the opening makes the movie comes off as an action comedy, with John C. McGinley chewing up the scenery HARD as he interacts with Stallone. He even says “Kemosabe” during the conversation. Who says that unironically? It also doesn’t help that Carter inserts a catchphrase while trying to be intimidating but is made fun of by the guy he’s beating up because it sounds like a catchphrase. Then, there’s a subsequent conversation between McGinley’s Con and Stallone’s Carter where Con hammers home the point of how you have to take care of business. Otherwise, the business will take care of you. For some reason, his delivery of “the business will take care of you” is cut and repeated three different times in three cartoonishly different ways by Con. It’s a really corny way to introduce the theme of the movie and is just tonally off from what the rest of the movie is.

In a way, it does prepare you for the overall strangeness surrounding the production however and these odd choices are made throughout that seemingly exist only to make the movie different, like the sped-up frame and a flash when Carter knocks out the Russian doorman with a single punch before going to Cyrus and Kinnear’s house party (“Nobody likes a list guy”). Then, there’s Carter viewing the porno on the disc and seeing Eddie and Geraldine taking advantage of Doreen, which turns his life upside down. To show this in the aftermath, the camera does this movement literally and it’s followed by a close-up of Carter that starts to shake in a dizzying effect to represent his mind racing. It worked when he was searching Gloria’s house because it’s like the rage blocks his vision, but for such an emotional aftermath, the only thing that is needed is acting. That’s the biggest issue with this Get Carter. It doesn’t know when to quit the circus act of the editing and just focus on the story when the big moments come. Sometimes, subtleness can be your friend as a filmmaker. Because of the imagery, it gets to the point where if there wasn’t any dialogue in the movie, the events of the narrative could easily be turned into a music video. If you’ve watched enough films over the years or had your formative years around 2000, odds are that you could watch Get Carter and guess exactly the timeframe in which it came out. That is how “much” it is. Trust me when I say that it’s that time period personified, for better or worse. Adding to the problems is Rachael Leigh Cook’s Doreen being the preeminent cliché of the angsty teen role, complete with a smoking habit and nose ring. I’m surprised she didn’t have a strand of dyed hair to go along with it.

The idea of the side plot of Carter messing with Audrey behind Fletcher’s back came from the original, with Carter messing with Anna behind the back of Gerald. In either case, I don’t think it worked. Though the general sleaziness of the movie fit with the fiendishness of Caine’s take on the titular gangster and the phone sex between him and Anna is looked at as one of the more memorable scenes of the original movie, I didn’t feel like it fit the narrative. Here, Stallone doesn’t fit the sexuality of Caine’s Carter, so he disregards that entirely in his performance and just focuses on the brutishness of his job and his dreary outlook on life. Because of this, a small side story of Carter having an affair just doesn’t mesh with Stallone’s persona (he’s not a romantic), his performance in this version of the character, or the events of the movie. With how he carries himself and moves throughout the course of events that take place, Carter mucking up his own business by sleeping with his boss’s girl just isn’t believable nor does it feel right. At this point in time, Stallone isn’t the sexual deviant badass gangster that Michael Caine did so well all those years ago. Stallone’s take is too different of a person, which is why this subplot doesn’t align with who this Jack Carter is. On top of that, I don’t see this older Stallone pulling a Gretchen Mol, and her deciding between him and Tom Sizemore makes even less sense. Who are we kidding here? Then, they’re trying to convince me within a few phone calls that he’s willing to cause a war with his mob boss over this girl and she’s nowhere near as invested into their relationship as he is? I don’t know. All of this just seems unnecessary and takes away from what the remake does best. This subplot should have been removed entirely, especially if they couldn’t even get Sizemore to show up onscreen. It was ineffective, unimportant, and didn’t help the story or character development enough to warrant the screen time it got. In addition, Sizemore being selected for a voiceover cameo seems like a good idea, but it was way too over-the-top and stood out poorly compared to Stallone’s realistic, grounded, and grief-filled performance. Instead of being this overbearing figure that might send people to kill Carter because of Carter refusing to come back to Vegas and his double crossing of Fletcher with Audrey, he is so loud and obnoxious that it comes off as trying too hard, becoming unintimidating as a result.

Then again, maybe this was the intention since Carter told Audrey that Fletcher was only acting tough because they were on the phone. Either way, the subplot was nothing but a waste of energy.

Also, why do they need Carter back in Las Vegas so fucking badly? His initial plan is to go for a weekend. What is so damn pressing that they refuse him going in the first place? This is before Fletcher finds out about Audrey too. In the original movie, Carter tells his bosses what he’s doing and where he’s going. They still don’t want him to go, and they give valid reasons, but Carter is simply a gangster who doesn’t care and wants to go for his brother. In the remake, everyone just tells Carter he can’t go, and they want him to work, and it gets to the point where they want to kill him. Why? Had they said something along the lines of them not wanting him to get mixed in with the millionaires like Kinnear because the press could be attracted to the name or Fletcher being adamant that he stay away from a bad dude like Cyrus because of all the weird stuff he was involved in (and they do know each other), this would be just enough to explain all aspects of the story. However, Fletcher and company just wanting him to work instead of having a weekend to himself just comes off as needy rather than threatening. Considering Carter works for the mafia, the viewer should be more worried for him, but we don’t buy their threats either. Something is wrong there. I did like Carter’s attempt to connect with Doreen, and her finally easing up to him at the diner. Nevertheless, I thought it was kind of stupid for her to make fun of what she is implying to be his OCD tendencies when she’s just spilling salt and pepper on the table. It’s not bothering him because he’s weird about that sort of thing. It’s bothering him because you’re making a mess for no fucking reason! On a funnier note, there’s this argument after Gloria’s house is destroyed and she was attacked where she yells at Carter for bringing all this drama to her family and how she wants him to just leave it alone. It’s a solid scene, but Carter somehow not seeing how he’s partially responsible for the havoc that has happened was genuinely funny. It’s like, “Dude, are you kidding? Where have you been?”.

Carter’s speech to Eddie before his demise was everything it needed to be but not giving the viewer the satisfaction of watching him getting his ass kicked and tossed off the balcony, and instead just showing him on the car was an awful decision. There was no excuse for that. We wanted to see that fucker brutalized. A cut like that is unacceptable in a movie like this.

Casting Mickey Rourke as a scumbag was a stroke of genius. From his douchey attire to his “bad dude” aura, Rourke’s Cyrus Paice is a totally different version of the “Eric Paice” from the original. Instead of being a fake tough guy and the lying pussy he was in the face of Caine’s Carter, Cyrus Paice is a motherfucker through and through. He’s the head of an internet porn company, dresses in the flashiest most “Early 2000s” clothes possible, and he’s a badass that can go. He does say, “Let me tell you something Jack” like 11 times, but that’s his only knock. Now, I love to give credit to Stallone as the best action hero of all time because he understands above all else how to tell a story better than the rest of his peers. He knows how to build heroes and villains and how important vulnerability is to making it all work. Someone like Arnold Schwarzenegger or Steven Seagal wouldn’t be caught dead giving their onscreen opponent such equal treatment to the point where they look like they could lose a fight. However, Stallone knows that the most important element of making a compelling action movie is giving him an antagonist that can give him a run for his money and trick the audience into thinking he could lose. Cyrus is pissed off that Carter is in town because he knows Carter is here to disrupt his business, but he’s not scared of him. When he gets in his face, he welcomes Carter to take a shot at him. Their earlier interaction in the alley turns into Cyrus putting a gun on Carter and telling him how Ritchie wasn’t a saint and how he did get drunk. Then, he talks about being tired of all the bullshit and is down to fight but leaves because he has business to attend to. It’s a convincing speech too. It’s not like he’s just running away because he has a gun on Carter and could kill him right there if he wanted to. All of this just leads to Carter coming to terms with some of these revelations and bending over to sob to himself. It’s unexpected, but it works with the forcefulness of Rourke’s scummy presence and Stallone’s Carter struggling to cope with the realities of this dark situation.

All of it leads to the best sequence of the movie. Right after Cyrus challenges Carter to shoot him in front of everyone at the party and how the man he really wants is Kinnear, he eventually just turns to follow his women into a separate room. Then, he looks at Carter and has the audacity to tell Carter to let it go, goading him to run up on him as soon as he turns his back. Following this is an all-time banger of a two-part fight scene that commences between them, and it’s one of my favorites ever. Cyrus beats the fuck out of Carter in the first encounter, and when he walks away cocky as hell, there’s this cool sideways shot from the ground of Cyrus walking away. In the best example of a character’s biggest mistake in leaving someone alive, it goes to another level in the following minute when Carter goes down to the rave happening in the basement of the house. Glossy-eyed and blood coming out of his face, Stallone stares wide-eyed like Al Pacino at Cyrus on the dance floor, who’s with his girls and without a care in the world. In that moment, you can’t help but feel goosebumps when the music is silenced and the original, minimalist “Carter Takes a Train” theme is played as Carter inches towards Cyrus and fucks him up Fight Club style in a furious beatdown, giving the audience a flashback to 1971, reminding us of what has defined this character after all these years. Very rarely will you see pure, unbridled rage like it is captured in this specific scene. Actually, it’s this remake’s biggest attribute. It still tiptoes the line of brutal revenge thriller and action movie and does lean a bit more into the latter than the former compared to the gritty 1971 original, but the emotion is what makes it work. Again, a lot of it is attributed to Stallone’s performance. He can intimidate like a real fixer but is also able to convey a real sympathy in his eyes to show how deeply he’s effected by what’s going on. It’s such an underrated performance. In the scene where he interrogates Geraldine, he approaches her as if he’s going to attack, but when he explains that he’s not going to hurt her and that he just wants to talk, Geraldine and the viewer believe in his words wholeheartedly because of how good Stallone is.

She has no reason to trust him, considering how he storms into her apartment, but he makes us all believe in that moment. He is aware he is the bad brother, but his motivation to figure out who was behind Ritchie’s death is a way for Carter to find redemption. The remake is softer in that aspect than the hardened original movie, but the material of the remake fits Stallone a lot better. He’s still an action hero at heart. When Cyrus tells Carter he’s just like him, he balks at this. Despite him supposedly being this tough enforcer who’s been to prison, he doesn’t consider his criminal exploits to be as damning as Cyrus’s. On the other hand, Caine’s Carter would have agreed with Cyrus but came up with a quip of his own to say he’s taking him down with him. If the original Carter was the one who found Geraldine overdosed in the bathroom, he probably would have stomped her face out on top of that. There’s no way he would have done the same thing as Stallone’s Carter with Kinnear either. It would have been DEFINITIVE with Caine’s Carter, with no remorse considered. That is the difference. Stallone’s Carter is just more human. As a fan of both movies and their different styles, I did appreciate Michael Caine being included in this remake purely for the novelty of it, especially when Carter demands to know where Eddie lives and Brumby tells him to stop because he could end up dead and the women could end up mourning again. It’s like the original Carter from beyond the grave giving advice to the new Carter with, “Revenge doesn’t work”. It’s like a subtle call back to the ending of the old film, where Carter killed every person until he himself was shot by that hitman. This line, coming from Caine himself, cemented the first movie’s legacy even more really. It was a nice touch, though Brumby’s character arc conclusion is a little insulting to fans of the original. You could argue the epilogue was a bit iffy as well, especially with the hip-hop song that transitions into the end credits, but they made up for it with the final hug.

Carter withering a bit when holding Doreen seems to be an acknowledgement of a dark fate incoming, and it’s much more fitting than him getting away with no issues. The implication is all that is needed here. He’s got a lot more “year-long nights” ahead of him. Still, I wouldn’t have finished the movie with that song.

Odd choice.

Sidestepping the sexual traits of the character while adding more emotional depth to him and the story, Sylvester Stallone makes the Get Carter remake worth watching. It’s not better or worse than the original film. It’s just different. At the very least, it’s not nearly as far apart from the first movie as people make it out to be. The original Get Carter was simplistic in its approach, there wasn’t much music at all, it was unnecessarily complicated, and it was slow-moving. The remake is uglier and a bit of a mess from an editing and direction standpoint (though unique and creative) and much more “Hollywood” than the naturalistic first movie, but the remake’s decision to move away from the nastiness and morally corrupt cast of ingrates in the dark criminal underworld of England was a good one. In addition, it has a better cast, there’s more action, it’s faster paced, and the people are just more likable. This isn’t a knock on the original because they were all bad people and that was the point, but it doesn’t take away from this being a positive attribute of the remake. You just care more for Jack Carter here. In the original, you just want Carter to succeed because everyone else was that much worse. Again, this remake is not better or worse. It’s just different. Though it’s true that Carter trying to make up for lost time with all of Ritchie’s family and the end message of redemption is nowhere near what the first film was about, it’s just a different way of telling the story. If it was too similar, the movie would be exactly the same as the old one but with a 2000s soundtrack and style. What’s the fun in that? What they did in 2000’s Get Carter was just as entertaining, if not more so. At this stage in Stallone’s career, critics just had a hard-on for trashing whatever he did. When you remake what many consider a “classic” film as well, it just fuels the uphill battle he was already facing to begin with. Considering that the original isn’t as great as people make it out to be, it’s remake is very good in comparison.

It modernized the film in a positive way, and though it didn’t necessarily hit on all fronts and may have lost the heart of what made the bleak original as invigorating and daring as it was, it was still extremely satisfying watching Jack Carter get his vengeance on some terrible people.