Get Carter

1971's GET CARTER is a striking motion picture, and for all its qualities I note the use of the actors' eyes as being one of the most memorable in this medium.  Michael Caine, who plays gangster Jack Carter, has irises that beguile as much as beat a confession out of an enemy.  Quite hypnotizing.  Kinda like Peter O'Toole in LAWRENCE OF ARABIA.  Many of the supporting players also sport interesting peepers.  One of the most memorable lines in the movie has Carter telling a former colleague in crime that his eyes look like "pissholes in the snow".   No one misses anything.

Director Mike Hodges fills the frame with character faces, and their eyes.  We get multiple, often uncomfortable close ups of Newcastle lowlifes as they evade and/or pursue the titular gangster.  They all have their reasons.  Carter has returned to his hometown to investigate the murder of his brother, and a nobleman he isn't.  He's unrepentant, a bad dude.  He roughs up just about everyone with whom he come in contact.  He is involved with one of his bosses' girlfriends, thinks nothing of leaving people in car trunks that are about to be submerged, and so on.  You could argue that these people all had it coming, all being involved in lurid doings that eventually reveals the production of a porn film, one involving Carter's young niece.  But at that moment, Carter reveals a heart, a stream of tear down his face.

GET CARTER is a crisply filmed and edited piece of early '70s grit, a career invigorator for Caine and a return to genre greatness for Brit cinema.  Roy Budd's score is minimalist perfection.  The film is an appropriately tough, no nonsense adaptation of the novel Jack's Return Home by Ted Lewis.  Hodges uses actual gritty North East England locations (all perfectly selected) and locals as extras to get as authentic a feel as possible.  The supporting cast is fine but this is Caine's show, a real showcase of his talent.  He holds his own in every scene, usually with the upper hand.  This quite amusingly includes his in-the-buff escort of two intruders out of a bedroom, where Carter's assignation with his landlady was interrupted.  This story is not without flashes of humour, though look out for that prototypical downbeat '70s finale.