"Listen. The only reason I came back to this craphouse was to find out who did it, and I'm not leaving until I do. You understand?"

It's already an hour into the movie when Jack Carter utters this promise to a slovenly whore as his hands tighten around her arms and his jawline extends with menace. He's had enough traversing down the seedy underbelly of non-answers to his brother's murder and is at a breaking point. From moment one, it's clear that Carter is someone you don't want to fuck with, a man who can and will take on anyone for the right reaction and he becomes more unhinged as the story progresses. This is the core joy in Get…

Normally I'm not all that bothered by villainous figures in films being wrongly appropriated as more heroic figures and made icons of for the benefits of pop culture. But the appearance of a shotgun wielding Jack Carter on mugs, t-shirts, posters and much more down the years DOES bother me.

I'm not even sure why. It could be because Mike Hodges, a director who distressingly went to crap just a few years after Get Carter, does such a great job of making Michael Caine's character such a contemptible piece of shit that I can hardly fathom why he has become so widely adored. He just seems to be a cut above the usual villains that are embraced as anti-heroes.

Carter…

Get Carter is of a gangster film class all by itself. Jack Carter is a gangster from London who goes north and back to his rotting hometown of Newcastle to find out who killed his brother Frank Carter. He plans to retaliate against those who killed Frank, going alone with more enemies than friends in Newcastle and his own London crime organization chasing him down to try and bring him back.

If you are a fan of Michael Caine, then Get Carter is a must see. Caine is beyond excellent here, giving a performance generally unseen throughout his long and illustrious career. Caine is Jack Carter, the character might seem dark on the page but it's more Caine than anything…

A landmark British gangster film of the 70's directed by Mike Hodges and starring Michael Caine, Ian Hendry, Britt Ekland, John Osborne and Bryan Mosley. The film is set in North East England and was filmed in and around Newcastle Upon Tyne, Gateshead and County Durham which gave the story a very real, very gritty sense of down-beat British life and crime

The story follows a London gangster, the eponymous Jack Carter (Caine) who travels back to his hometown to discover more about the events surrounding the supposedly accidental death of his brother. Suspecting foul play, he investigates and interrogates, getting a feel for the city and its hardened criminal element; with vengeance on his mind the situation builds to…

"Listen. The only reason I came back to this craphouse was to find out who did it, and I'm not leaving until I do. You understand?"

It's already an hour into the movie when Jack Carter utters this promise to a slovenly whore as his hands tighten around her arms and his jawline extends with menace. He's had enough traversing down the seedy underbelly of non-answers to his brother's murder and is at a breaking point. From moment one, it's clear that Carter is someone you don't want to fuck with, a man who can and will take on anyone for the right reaction and he becomes more unhinged as the story progresses. This is the core joy in Get…

Oh my. Michael Caine has never been better. This is his defining performance. He owns the film like nothing he's ever done before, creating a man so visceral and evil that it stretches the theory of an anti-hero way beyond it's usual limits. And the film that matches his performance couldn't have been better. It is, in it's own way, a gritty ode to the decade of it's birth. Maybe they did not know it when they made it, but this film is a time capsule, similar to Rebel Without a Cause or The Breakfast Club, only with less teenagers and more dead bodies.

This does not feel like a gangster film, instead it has a similar tone to Dirty…