This film is an excellent of British cinema, let alone British gangster cinema. This film is about Jack Carter (Michael Caine), a mob enforcer from London who goes to Newcastle to attend his brother Frank's funeral. While there, he suspects that Frank's death was an assassination and seeks the truth.The main strengths of this film are its gritty realism and Caine's performance. The violence is brutal (as it should be, violence is never pleasant). The location of Newcastle is an unpleasant place to be, the perfect breeding ground for criminals. This also adds to the aesthetic of the film, its not attempting to glamorise the gangster lifestyle like Scorsese's films do (nothing against this movies - they're still great). Caine's character is angry throughout the film (and rightly so - his brother died). But in the scene when he realises why his brother was killed was well done. In this scene he watches a scene from a pornographic movie and discovers his niece was in it. Caine's performance in this scene is good: he went from happiness to sadness to anger in a short space of time.The ending is good, after getting his revenge Carter is killed by an assassin. The ending was to show Carter's actions were not justified and that violence only leads to more violence.While looking through the reviews here, someone criticised that this movie did not focus on the inner workings of the gangs. I think this is justifiable for two reasons. First, this film is a revenge story. Second, it is also Carter's story. Carter works for the London mob not the Newcastle mob. Gangster films that show the inner workings of gangs do so because they're told from the perspective of someone from the inside. Carter is an outsider. Another thing that is criticised is the lack of character development. This is true. The characters aren't very deep, but they don't need to be, their motivation is clear. The reason I gave this movie an 8/10 is because it's rough around the edges and is a little dated. This is understandable considering it was the director's first film as well as being low budget. I would still recommend the film.

Taking an American perspective on this very British film leads me to several observations. First, Michael Caine is terrific as the ice cold killer, seeking revenge for his brother's death. Second, the grim photography is outstanding. Third, the violence is believable and often quite brutal. Now for the bad news. The British accents are very difficult to understand which detracts. I might even go so far as to suggest using English subtitles. The main flaw however is the characters are numerous, undeveloped, and seem to randomly appear and vanish. It is not easy to follow the somewhat complex story line, which along with the language problem. makes "Get Carter" challenging to watch. - MERK

If there is one film the popularity of which has me completely mystified, it's Get Carter.Jack Carter (played by Michael Caine) is a strong-arm man for the London mob who returns to Newcastle (a train journey accompanied by Roy Budd's superbly atmospheric theme) to find out who killed his brother; after about an hour he sets about murdering everyone who was involved in any way whatsoever.So far as we can tell (since there is no character development at all) said individuals are the lowest of the low; the problem here is that so is Carter. He has absolutely no redeeming qualities which makes it impossible to care about what happens to him.If the ending, in which Carter takes a bullet to the head, is an attempt to make us feel some sympathy for him, it doesn't work.He gets what he's had coming to him and frankly, it comes as a relief.

For a start, I am only 21 so my perception of what was and is thought to be acceptable good film making might in some ways have been spoilt by the more recent sorts of films I 'grew up' with, but I was quite disappointed with Get Carter taken as a whole.The prime reason for me for giving this film a go lately was the recommendation of its plain striking atmosphere and given my personal fascination for the Tyneside area I definitely loved the 'authentic' setting of the scenery. It certainly is the thing I liked most about this work, but unfortunately that is almost it. Apart from this the film has some good moments (the very first few cuts of Eklands driving scene...like a couple of other elements this gets exhausting) and the somewhat nihilistic straightness and turns of the plot, let alone the congenial ending, are one thing I could highly enjoy on one side, yet on the other the story 'development' just does not seem to cope with implementing these aspects suitably - neither do including Caine most of the actors, who often enough appear slightly misplaced (for the role of Carter that unluckily does Not apply in the good sense of him as a resolute tough intruder in the northern criminal milieu..) and awkward, which adds to the artificial feeling of the storyline and Carter pulling (shagging and slaying) his mission through. At this point I do not want to vent extensively on some of the conflict scenes, especially around the final, because to me their pathetic setting and acting are too obvious a flaw.After all there are just too many things that do not work together. I left this film behind feeling that it was too half-heartedly conceptualised/made and undeliberately empty to really be that respectively quite overrated top classic some consider it to be.