Get Carter (film)
Get Carter is a 1971 British crime film, directed by Mike Hodges, starring Michael Caine as Jack Carter, a British mobster who sets out to avenge the death of his brother in a series of unrelenting and brutal killings played out against the grim background of derelict urban housing in a low income 1970s industrial city.
Tagline : What happens when a professional killer violates the code? Get Carter!
The film was based on Ted Lewis' 1969 novel Jack's Return Home, and was Hodges' first job as director; he also wrote the film's script. The film went from novel to finished film in just eight months, with location shooting in Newcastle and Gateshead lasting just forty days. The film was produced by Michael Klinger and released by MGM. This film was also Alun Armstrong's film debut.
The poster for the movie does not represent the film accurately. Carter is never seen wearing anything as gaudy as a floral jacket, Eric does not carry a gun at any point (indeed, the gun shown in the poster closely resembles Carter's), and the grappling man and woman do not resemble any characters in the film. The only fight of this kind depicted in the finished work is between two women in the pub that Carter visits, mid way through the film. The only part of the collage that is in any way accurate is the depiction of Kinnear struggling in police hands.
Promotional
shots exist from the film showing Carter holding a pump action shotgun, despite
the fact that the only shotgun used by Carter is a double-barreled shotgun which
Jack finds on top of his brother Frank's wardrobe. (A sawed-off pump action shotgun
is used by Peter in an unauthorized attempt to kill Carter at the ferry landing.)
The first shot (found in some books about Gangster films) shows him pointing the
gun at the camera and to a person who has not seen the film would appear to be
an actual still. The second (found on the back of some DVD Covers, i.e. the Australian
release of the film) is more clearly a promotional shot and shows Carter posing
with one arm around Anna (Britt Ekland) and the other holding the pump action
shotgun by his side.
Cast
Michael
Caine - Jack Carter
Ian Hendry - Eric Paice
Britt
Ekland - Anna Fletcher
John Osborne - Cyril Kinnear
Tony Beckley - Peter
George Sewell - Con
Geraldine Moffat - Glenda (as Geraldine Moffatt)
Dorothy White - Margaret
Rosemarie Dunham - Edna
Petra Markham
- Doreen Carter
Alun Armstrong - Keith
Bryan Mosley - Cliff Brumby
Glynn Edwards - Albert Swift
Bernard Hepton - Thorpe
Terence Rigby -
Gerald Fletcher
Plot
Newcastle-born gangster Jack Carter has moved to London to work for British mob boss Gerald Fletcher (Terence Rigby). As the film opens, Jack returns to Newcastle to attend the funeral of his brother, Frank, who died in what was officially listed as a drunken car accident. However, Jack suspects he was murdered and sets out to uncover the truth. After setting himself up with a room in a small boarding-house, Jack re-establish links with his family and past associates. After Jack questions local loan shark Cyril Kinnear (John Osborne), rival henchmen threaten Carter and warn him to leave town, but he violently attacks them. When he forces one of the henchmen to give him a name of someone who might be involved in Frank's death, he learns the name "Brumby."
Cliff Brumby (Bryan Mosley) is a ruthless mob enforcer with a controlling interest in local arcades. After Jack accosts him, he realizes that the thugs gave Brumby's name as a red herring to throw him off the trail. In Jack's absence, the rivals return, and attack the boarding house landlady (Rosemarie Dunham). The following morning, Fletcher, , sends two strong-arm henchmen to get Jack to return to London, but Jack forces them back with a shotgun and escapes. The fact that so many people want him out of Newcastle only strengthens his suspicions. With Fletcher's men in pursuit, Jack meets with Brumby at the Trinity Centre Multi-Storey Car Park, who pegs Kinnear as Frank's killer and offers him £5,000 to kill him, which Jack refuses. After Jack discovers that his niece Doreen was an unwilling participant in an amateur pornographic film filmed in Kinnear's apartment, he becomes enraged.
(There is some indication that Doreen is in fact Jack's daughter following an affair with his sister-in-law. When Jack gives Keith money for "a course in karate", Keith screams that Frank "didn't even know if the kid was his!")
Jack concludes that Frank knew about the films and was killed before he could expose them. Jack's subsequent revenge is unrelenting and brutal, played out against the grim background of Tyneside in the early 1970s, a world of smoky bars, working men's clubs and derelict urban housing. Jack takes out each of his enemies with no remorse and utter brutality.
In Kinnear's case, Jack sends the film to the police with all the details connected to it. Kinnear's residence is raided by the police during a wild party and arrests are made, thus destroying what honesty is left to his reputation.
Jack meanwhile chases the last of his brother's killers along an ugly industrial black shoreline littered with piles of coal slag, gets him drunk like he did Frank and kills him.
As Jack tosses his gun into the sea, a paid hitman(known only as "J", the initial on his signet ring), who was contacted by Kinnear the previous evening, kills him with a long-range sniper shot to the head. The film ends with a shot of Carter's corpse on the lonely shoreline by the coal slag, the wind providing a bitter soundtrack as the cold, dirty waves wash over him.
Theme music was composed by Roy Budd, a jazz and "easy listening" specialist, who worked well outside his previous boundaries for this film. The much admired theme tune features the sounds of Caine's train journey from London to Newcastle. All the music was played by Budd and two other jazz musicians, Jeff Clyne (double bass) and Chris Karan (percussion). The soundtrack was first released on CD by the Cinephile label in 1998 (it had previously only been released in Japan). It has often been used as incidental music for TV programmes and adverts, most with no connection to the film.
The
influential Human League album Dare contains a track covering the Get Carter theme,
although it was only a version of the sparse leitmotif that opens and closes the
film as opposed to the full-blooded jazz piece that accompanies the train journey.
Stereolab also covers Roy Budd's theme on their album Aluminum Tunes, Volume 2,
although they call their version Get Carter, as opposed to its proper title, Main
Theme (Carter Takes A Train). This Stereolab version was subsequently used as
a sample in the song "Got Carter" by 76.
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