ForGet "Carter"

Get Carter (Crime drama, color, R, 1:44)
By Todd McCarthy, Daily Variety Chief Film Critic

HOLLYWOOD (Variety) - Get Carter is a useless remake of Mike Hodges' 1971 British gangland cult classic. Stylistically mannered and amped up in ways that clearly define how mainstream narrative filmmaking has declined in recent years, this latest Sylvester Stallone "comeback" picture lacks excitement, credibility, suspense, character insight or anything else that might conceivably engage viewers, other than a certain surface showiness. Revenge drama boasts enough rough action, however routine, to lure some Stallone faithful, but the picture's dour tone and tiresomely familiar moves will make for a mild box office impact.

A special favorite among genre specialists, Michael Caine fans and young Brit directors who are now themselves turning out cold-blooded crimers by the trunkload, Hodges' adaptation of Ted Lewis' 1970 novel about an East End gangster unleashing payback for his brother's murder was subtle, understated and insidious, as well as being thick with vivid characterization and grimy Newcastle atmosphere. The film inspired an American remake with a black cast, "Hit Man," directed by George Armitage, in 1972.

The new version tips its hat to the old at the outset as an evocation of Roy Budd's memorable "Get Carter Theme" underscores a flashy credits sequence in which Las Vegas "financial adjuster" Jack Carter (Stallone) leaves his criminal bosses in the lurch and entrains to Seattle to attend his brother's funeral. Initially reproached by his brother's wife, Gloria (Miranda Richardson), and latter's teen daughter, Doreen (Rachael Leigh Cook), for having been out of touch for years, the nattily dressed and Vandyked thug suspects his brother was murdered and begins poking around the rain-soaked city for likely suspects.

The search immediately leads Jack into an almost laughably familiar "corrupt urban underbelly" populated by the likes of Mickey Rourke playing, of all things, a coke-snorting, sunglasses-shrouded Internet porn entrepreneur; Alan Cumming as a sniveling high-tech tycoon; Rhona Mitra as a slutty moll who had been Jack's brother's "lady on the side"; and, lo and behold, Michael Caine himself, taking a quick payday for four scenes as the brother's former boss, a quaintly old-fashioned but wily club owner.

With director Stephen Kay, fresh off The Mod Squad evidently preoccupied by how to keep his images popping at all times (the picture is loaded with frame-skipping, off-kilter compositions and other trendy stylistic tics), any deeper levels aspired to in the pared-down script by David McKenna (American History X) go thoroughly unmined. While the basic plot progression of the original is followed pretty closely, the update soft-pedals the vengeful brutality and quasi-existential nihilism, the better to investigate Jack's chance at redemption.

The latter is pursued via his attempt to make amends with Gloria and particularly with young Doreen, whose role becomes more central as matters climax. This is where some deep reaching by Stallone and fine writing might have made the difference, but it's not forthcoming; a long rooftop scene between Jack and Doreen is meant to summon up elemental emotions, but the dialogue lacks eloquence and focus, and there is nothing going on behind Stallone's eyes and therefore nothing communicated from his character's stoical figure. It's clear what they were trying to do here, but it simply isn't delivered.

Except for some fisticuffs (notably between Rocky and former real-life pro boxer Rourke) and sporadic doses of other rough stuff, bloodshed is mostly kept offscreen, while more conventional action sequences are surprisingly routine; particularly lackluster is a nocturnal car chase in which the vehicles run through a Christmas tree lot (what must The French Connection editor Jerry Greenberg have thought when confronted with this?).

Tech contributions are flashy, with wintry Seattle/British Columbia locations providing plenty of wet, gloomy atmosphere. Gretchen Mol goes unbilled in a brief appearance as Jack's girlfriend back in Vegas, but doesn't get to enact the memorable phone-sex interlude shared by Caine and Britt Ekland in the original; a comparison between the equivalent scenes in the two pictures -- the first gamy and provocative, the second bland and conventional -- neatly sums up the vast gap between the films.

Jack Carter ........ Sylvester Stallone
Gloria ............. Miranda Richardson
Doreen ............. Rachael Leigh Cook
Jeremy Kinnear ..... Alan Cumming
Cyrus Paice ........ Mickey Rourke
Con McCarty ........ John C. McGinley
Geraldine .......... Rhona Mitra
Eddie .............. Johnny Strong
Thorpey ............ John Cassini
Les Fletcher ....... Garwin Sanford
Cliff Brumby ....... Michael Caine
Audrey ............. Gretchen Mol

A Warner Bros. Release of a Morgan Creek Prods./Franchise Pictures presentation of a Franchise Pictures/Canton Co. production. Produced by Mark Canton, Elie Samaha, Neil Canton. Executive producers, Andrew Stevens, Don Carmody, Billy Gerber, Ashok Amritraj, Steve Bing, Arthur Silver. Co-producers, Dawn Miller, James Holt, John Goldstone.

Directed by Stephen Kay. Screenplay, David McKenna, based on the novel "Jack's Return Home" by Ted Lewis. Camera (Alpha Cine Lab color, Deluxe prints; Panavision widescreen), Mauro Fiore; editor, Jerry Greenberg; music, Tyler Bates; executive music supervisor, Jellybean Benitez; production designer, Charles J. H. Wood; art director, Helen Jarvis; set decorator, Elizabeth Wilcox; costume designer, Julie Weiss; sound (Dolby Digital/SDDS/DTS), Eric Batut; sound designer/supervisor, Richard King; associate producer, Kevin King; assistant director, Jim Brebner; Seattle second unit director, Spiro Razatos; Seattle unit camera, Igor Meglic; casting, Amanda Mackey Johnson, Cathy Sandrich. Reviewed at Warner Bros. Studios, Burbank, Oct. 4, 2000.

Reuters/Variety REUTERS

I went to see "Meet the parents" too bad it sold out just as me and my friends got in line. So we saw "Get Carter" instead.

I personally liked it. RLC looked great and the story wasn't bad. I won't ruin the plot, but it was a good movie, maybe 2.5/3 of 4. They were some hard to make sense of flashbacks to help you understand the story, and the way they shot the film gave some slightly annoying camera angles and views, but the movie and acting was good. The plot was pretty sound and it lead you into it. Nothing over the top, and the car chases were slighltly overdone, but it was pretty good. Now I'm 15 and my taste may differ slightly from the 18-24 group but if you like action movies with a pretty good story line then see it.

Thanks for the review, I assume you are back now?

Yep I'm back finally.

Did RLC have a lot of screen time?

Yea, I was actually surprised, I figured she would be in 3 minutes of it but she was actually in about 50% of the movie. The whole story revolves around her so she is in alot of it.

I was expecting it to be a Stallone extravaganza with action scenes and a little RLC part.

Aside from RLC, all the other names of the actors sound like pornstar alias. Don't ask me how I even got into that subject.

Heh, Micky Rourke is in it, he's sorta a bad boy, or he was. He kicks the shit out of stallone in part of the movie The girl from "hollow man"/baily's GF from POF was in it.