Get Carter

Get Carter is a 1971 British crime film directed by Mike Hodges and starring Michael Caine, Ian Hendry,Britt Ekland, John Osborne and Bryan Mosley. The screenplay was adapted by Hodges from Ted Lewis' 1969 novel Jack's Return Home. Producer Michael Klinger optioned the book and made a deal for the ailing Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) studio to finance and release the film, bringing in Hodges and Caine. Caine became a co-producer of the film. Get Carter was Hodges' first feature film as director, as well as being the screen debut of Alun Armstrong. MGM was scaling back its European operations and the film became the last project approved before the American company closed its Borehamwood studios. The film is set in North East England and was filmed in and around Newcastle upon Tyne, Gateshead, and County Durham.

The story follows a London gangster, the eponymous Jack Carter (Caine), who travels back to his hometown to discover more about the events surrounding his brother Frank's supposedly-accidental death. 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 a violent conclusion.

Jack's Return Home

Jack's Return Home is a 1970 novel by British writer Ted Lewis. An uncompromising novel of a brutal half-world of pool halls, massage parlours and teenage pornography, it was memorably brought to life in the cult film Get Carter, starring Michael Caine as Jack Carter. The novel starkly portrays a subsection of society living on the dangerous borderline between crime and respectability. The book was a major influence on the noir school of English crime fiction.

The novel went out of print for many years and slipped into obscurity, but there was a resurgence of interest in it in the 1990s after the 1971 film adaptation, Get Carter, gradually grew in reputation and was remade in 2000. The book was republished in paperback under the title Get Carter by Allison & Busby in 1993.

Plot summary

Jack's Return Home tells the story of an amoral, pitiless London mob enforcer named Jack Carter who returns to his home town after changing trains at Doncaster to investigate the mysterious death of his brother, with whom he had not spoken in many years. Jack's presence in the town causes unease among the local crime families, who fear that his snooping will interfere with their underworld operations. Everything from simple suggestion to brute force is employed to try to get Jack to leave, but he doggedly refuses, bullying his way through numerous attempts on his life to arrive at the truth, leading to a violent and ambiguous conclusion.

Get Carter (2000 film)

Get Carter is a 2000 American thriller film, a remake of the Michael Caine 1971 film of the same name, directed by Stephen Kay, and stars Sylvester Stallone, Miranda Richardson, Rachael Leigh Cook, Alan Cumming, Mickey Rourke, John C. McGinley, Michael Caine and Rhona Mitra.

The film was released in the United States on October 6, 2000 and was released by Warner Bros., which had recently acquired the distribution rights via Turner Entertainment to the original.

Stallone said he regrets making the film.

Plot

Mob enforcer Jack Carter returns home to Seattle, Washington when he learns that his brother, Ritchie, has been killed in a drunk driving accident. While he starts investigating Ritchie's murder, his mob partner in Las Vegas, Con McCarty, covers for him with the mob boss, Fletcher. It also comes out that Carter has been having an affair with Fletcher's girlfriend, Audrey.

At his brother's funeral, Jack meets his niece, Doreen, and has a strained and emotional conversation with his brother's widow. He also speaks with Eddie, a friend and coworker of Ritchie's, and he also notices a beautiful woman, Geraldine, who has come to pay her respects. She is evasive and cryptic about how she knew Ritchie and what the extent of their relationship was. At the wake, Jack continues to question mourners and well wishers about what really happened to his brother, which draws the ire of Ritchie's widow. He also talks to Doreen while they sit smoking on the front stoop and she states that Ritchie rarely drank and would never have driven while intoxicated. Earlier at the funeral, Eddie also stated that Ritchie rarely drank and that he was most certainly not involved in illicit activities.