“Believe it or not, I think Get Carter was really underrated. That was a big disappointment. I learned the hard way that [remakes]even if you do it better than the original, there’s a tremendous nostalgia attached to the original.”That’s Sylvester Stallone in The Hollywood Reporter back in 2022talking about the highs and lows of his remarkable career as an actor and filmmaker. Stallone certainly has much to be proud of, but let’s not kid ourselves: taking the lead role in Get Carteran ill-advised and misbegotten remake of the Mike Hodges-directed, Michael Caine-starring 1971 UK crime drama should not be listed among them.
In fact, the implication that this 2000 US do-over is “better than the original” – and if Sly isn’t talking about Get Carter but other remakes that improve on their predecessor, then he should have made himself much fucking clearer – is even more of an insult than the movie itself.
And the movie is pretty insulting, even if you’re not an admirer of the Hodges-Caine version, which follows a glacial-blooded mob enforcer, Caine’s Jack Carter, returning to his grim home town of Newcastle to investigate the death of his brother, only to find it’s the tip of a very nasty iceberg.
Now, this is not to say that an American version of Get Carter – or Jack’s Return Homethe Ted Lewis novel from which it’s adapted — is impossible to pull off. After all, Roger Corman’s brother Gene did just that in 1972 with Hit Mana Blaxploitation take on the material that relocated the action to Los Angeles and cast Bernie Casey as the story’s vengeance-seeking antihero. (In an unwitting advertisement for Hit Mandirected by the late George Armitage of Miami Blues and Big blank point fame, the National Legion of Decency claimed the movie’s “dizzying spectacle of raw sex and supergraphic violence would horrify the Marquis de Sade”. It’s amazing Corman didn’t put that on the poster.)
With the 2000 Get CarterStallone, director Stephen Kay (The Last Time I Committed Suicide) and screenwriter David McKenna (American History X) are paying slavish tribute to the ’71 version, jamming in everything from Tyler Bates’s techno-infused remix of Roy Budd’s sinuous main theme to a supporting role for Caine (who originally signed on for a cameo as a favor to his friend and Victory co-star Stallone).
One can see what drew Stallone to the project – after a stab at regaining his dramatic bona fides with 1997’s Cop Land didn’t reinvent his persona, Carter must have looked like a chance for Sly to have the best of both worlds by playing a taciturn bruiser embarking on a righteous revenge trip while hinting at a more sensitive and introspective side as a caring uncle to his victimised niece Doreen (She’s All That star Rachael Leigh Cook).
It’s not a terrible idea. I mean, the tough guy with the heart of gold is definitely in Stallone’s wheelhouse. But the title Get Carter comes with certain expectations – the original film is cruel to the core, and any flicker of humanity in Caine’s Carter is quickly tamped down and replaced by fury and violence.
So while McKenna and Kay valiantly attempt to give the story’s corruption and degradation a new-millennium update and make their gloomy, rainy Seattle setting an analogue for the original’s sooty, seedy Newcastle, there’s still a sense that the 2000 Carter is pulling its punches, even while it’s talking tough (and sometimes inelegantly – in sizing up adversary Cyrus Paice, played by a mildly scummy Mickey Rourke, Carter calls his eyes “cat piss in the snow”, a strange revamp of the original’s “piss holes in the snow”).
But what does a remake owe its source material and its audience? A slavish impersonation or cover version, with new players replicating all the familiar beats, may provide a fleeting thrill but we’ve seen enough examples of faithful renditions – or even straight-up duplicates, like Gus Van Sant’s 1998 Psycho redux – that only reinforce appreciation and affection for the original.
The main problem here is that Kay’s film can’t decide what tone it wants to strike. It’s trying to split the difference between a sleek actioner as fresh as the year 2000 – get a load of that digital tinkering with color palettes, that jittery editing, that Groove Armada track over the closing credits — and a crime drama with freon in his veins. It makes Stallone’s Get Carter a curio, a relic of an awkward time when the studios – and the superstars of the ‘80s and ‘90s — were figuring out how to reconfigure themselves, reconcile the old and the new. The irony in Stallone using Get Carter as a way to do that was that the 1971 film, with all its cynicism and bleakness, felt like it hadn’t aged a day.
“Get Carter” is streaming on Kanopy and is available for digital rental or purchase.
