Get Carter. 1971. Directed by Mike Hodges.

(2/5/01)

I saw this film almost a month ago (January 15) and just hadn't gotten around to writing about it. It's a mean, tough movie about a man involved in the underworld who believes his brother has been murdered and comes to find the killers.

What he discovers is that his niece--the brother's daughter--had been involved in the making of a porn film. The brother had discovered this, made trouble and been murdered in consequence. Carter learns the truth, kills those involved (or has some of them kill each other, according to the program note) and is himself killed at the end.

Get Carter is certainly dated. That's not necessarily a bad thing--it has the flavor of its time. There is a scene at a disco which locates the film in time. There is the kind of explicit love scenes (or sex scenes) that were so prevalent in those days. And then there is that fascination with pornography which was also an aspect of the time. When we first see Jack Carter he is with a group of his colleagues watching sexually explicit slides--of all things. Carter makes an erotic phone call to a girl friend played by Britt Ekland and there is some raunchy humor including (to the best of my recollection) men deprived of their clothes being seen by a parade of schoolgirls.

Michael Caine is fascinating to watch as Carter. He is impeccably dressed, well-mannered, soft-spoken--and then suddenly there is this raw brutality. He reminds me of James Bond, especially in his Roger Moore incarnation, although Moore seems more upper-class than Michael Caine, especially when we see him in the industrial milieu he comes from.

It's a very unpleasant revenge film and it left a bad taste in my mouth. I especially remembered the ending in which Carter lets the man who (I think) did the actual killing of his brother run from him until he is exhausted and can't run any more. Then he forces him to drink a whole bottle of whiskey and smashes his head with a blunt instrument. At the beginning of the film the act of avenging the brother seems just, but Carter doesn't seem just in that scene. It is like his anger or hatred has taken him over and turned him into something inhuman. What he did to that man didn't seem right--or didn't feel right--and I was glad when he was shot down right afterwards.

The film was also interesting as a picture of a rough industrial area. The print was hard to hear and I missed a lot of the dialogue and consequently had a hard time following it.