The author of this review has seldom greeted a work of cinema with such low expectations like in the case of Get Carter, 2000 action thriller directed by Stephen Kay. And it was even rarer for me to find myself unpleasantly surprised with poor quality of such films.
The film is adaptation of Jack’s Return Home, 1970 crime novel by British author Ted Lewis, which had been a year later adapted into Get Carter, which is now considered one of the classics of British cinema and one of the best gangster films ever made. New version has the plot set in America and begins when Jack Carter (played by Sylvester Stallone), enforcer for Las Vegas mob, learns that his brother Ritchie died in traffic accident. He travels to Seattle where he meets Ritchie’s widow Gloria (played by Miranda Richardson) and daughter Doreen (played by Rachael Leigh Cook) who both express doubts about circumstances of Ritchie’s death. After finding out that some of the local gangsters don’t want him to snoop around, Carter begins doing exactly that and using his violent skills to extract truth in quest that leads him to Ritchie’s employer, bar owner and loanshark Cliff Brumby (played by Michael Caine) and, later, to aspiring computer entrepreneur Jeremy Kinnear (played by Alan Cumming) and porn producer Cyrus Paice (played by Mickey Rourke).
Remakes of great films aren’t problems per se. Original Get Carter was already remade in 1972 as blaxploitation film Hit Man starring Bernie Casey which, while predictably below level of its predecessor, had certain refreshing quality. Nothing of the sort can be found in Stephen Kay’s film which tries to water down the raw, violent and rather depressive story about brutal revenge into something more digestible to modern Hollywood mainstream. Bleak setting of industrial English city of Newcastle is replaced with “hip” and “cool” Seattle, while the main protagonist was transformed from frightening killing machine into “kinder and gentler” mobster who wants to do the right thing for his family. Yet even with those interventions new Get Carter could have worked, at least for viewers who haven’t seen 1971 version. Unfortunately, director Stephen Kay also tried to make his film different from the original in visual sense and employed all kinds of techniques typical for MTV-influenced directors in 1990s and 2000s like slow motion and bizarre angles. The result is complete mess that even makes action scenes look confusing. Sylvester Stallone is wrong choice for the role of the main character and presence of Michael Caine, who played Carter three decades earlier, just bring devastating comparisons between two. Talents of otherwise effective actors like Alan Cummings and Mickey Rourke are also wasted. Get Carter was savaged by critics and turned into massive box office flop. 102 minutes of someone’s life is too much of price to pay in order to watch this film and find out why that happened.
RATING: 1/10 (--)
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