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Get Carter film review
GET CARTER
Running time: 102 mins
Starring: Sylvester Stallone, Miranda Richardson, Rachel Leigh Cook, Alan Cumming, Mickey Rourke, Michael Caine
In the 30 years since Mike Hodges' original, Get Carter has become established as a cult movie, a tag usually considered a euphemism for having been ignored when first released. What surprised me when I recently saw it again is how insubstantial the original is. As an exercise in style over content, it hasn't aged well.
Stephen T. Kay's remake certainly has been brought up to date visually, doused liberally in a Hollywood sheen it bears little resemblance to its bleak source. The location has inevitably changed with Seattle's drizzly climate substituting for Newcastle's drizzly climate, but much remains the same. Even many of the character's names are similar. Unfortunately the most significant difference is that the original had Michael Caine, who could act.
Sylvester Stallone plays Jack Carter as a cold, stiff mono-syllabic thug with a penchant for tight suits and corny dialogue. The vulnerable, three-dimensional actor we glimpsed in Copland has gone, replaced by his usual steroid-pumped macho posturing. I know that Carter isn't exactly in the running for humanitarian of the year, but at least Caine was able to imbue him with a certain degree of compassion.
The story revolves round Jack Carter, a debt collector or "financial adjustor" as he calls himself, whose estranged brother has died in a car accident. While attending the funeral he begins to suspect that perhaps the death wasn't quite an accident and so begins his immersion in Seattle's seedy underworld in search of answers. He encounters a variety of colourful and shady characters including Mickey Rourke as the salacious porn barron Cyrus Paice, Alan Cumming as the weasly effeminate technologies mogul Jeremy Kinnear and Michael Caine making a welcome reappearance as the duplicitous businessman Cliff Bumby.
Set against this is Carter's involvement with his late brother's wife Gloria (Miranda Richardson) and daughter (Rachel Leigh Cook). He struggles to overcome their natural resentment towards him for not being involved in their life when his brother was alive. It's this guilt and desire to make amends that spur him on despite threats from all those he encounters to abandon his quest. Slowly the sordid truth behind his brother's murder is revealed in one very graphic and chilling moment as he realises the implications of his discovery.
The film boasts a strong cast and Kay does his best to keep things moving and interesting, but at the heart is still a charmless and wooden Stallone who blusters his way through with lines like "you really don't want to know me" and "you're history" as he struts around a sodden and gray Seattle wearing designer suits and sunglasses. For someone so obsessed with his appearance, he might have at least invested in a nice Burberry.
One of the most memorable scenes in the original was the ending, which was both shocking and poignant, making Stallone's decision to change it this time round absurd although, given that this is Hollywood and he is Stallone, hardly surprising.
The trend for remaking old films would suggest that something in the original could be improved upon, and in the case of Get Carter that certainly is the case, however in this instance they failed.
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