Crime movies have grown a lot more vicious since 1971, but few pack the hard crime impact of Mike Hodges’ gangster revenge tale. Michael Caine’s Jack Carter is a London hit man who returns to his roots in Newcastle, to sort out the sudden death of his brother. It leads to the expected trail of dead bodies, as Carter out-maneuvers the Northern hoods at their own game. The sordid context and grisly mayhem intensify going forward; Caine strips the glamour from his star persona and lets the bad times roll. Also starring Ian Hendry, Britt Ekland, John Osborne and Tony Beckley, speaking in authentic regional accents.

Get Carter
4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray
Warner Archive Collection
1971 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 112 min. / Street Date August 26, 2025 / Available at MovieZyng / 29.99
Starring: Michael Caine, Ian Hendry, Britt Ekland, John Osborne, Tony Beckley, George Sewell, Geraldine Moffatt, Dorothy White, Bryan Mosley, Rosemarie Dunham, Petra Markham, Alun Armstrong, Glynn Edwards, Bernard Hepton, Terence Rigby.
Cinematography: Wolfgang Suschitsky
Production Designer: Assheton Gorton
Art Director: Roger King
Costumes: Evangeline Harrison
Film Editor: John Trumper
Music Composer: Roy Budd
From the novel Jack’s Return Home by Ted Lewis
Produced by Michael Klinger, Michael Caine
Written and Directed by Mike Hodges

The Warner Archives’ latest foray into 4K releases finds another title likely to please collectors. Mike Hodges’  Get Carter arrived in 1971, when critics were crying foul against a trend of violent, transgressive movies. It was soon playing mostly in grind houses … before being recognized as a new kind of crime classic.

Before  The Godfather revived the traditional period-set gangster film, the genre was becoming a little confused. Hollywood hadn’t yet fully processed the epochal  Bonnie & Clyde and was turning out crime stories half-heartedly addressing ‘shocking new’ issues like police corruption. The biggest event picture was probably 1971’s  Dirty Harry, a can of political worms that blamed society’s ills on permissiveness and lobbied for the security of a police state. English crime films were in a slump as well. Although they are now frequently revived, sordid crime pictures didn’t find favor with the Brit censors back then.

Despite interesting exceptions like Peter Yates’  Robbery, many ’60s Brit crime films had become comic in nature. In his commentary on this disc, Michael Caine says that movie gangsters tended to be funny and stupid people, like the funny, clumsy crook he had just played in his 1969 hit  The Italian Job. But Caine had met his share of real gangsters, and the ones he knew definitely weren’t funny and weren’t stupid.

Caine was a producer on 1971’s Get Carter, an impressive gangster classic that’s still not all that well known despite having been ‘rediscovered’ for decades. It’s uncommonly unsentimental even by the standards of crime pictures. Star Michael Caine plays the leading part in hard-case mode, doing without his customary winning charm and coy mannerisms. The movie’s gritty violence changed the look of British crime pictures, and its unblinking glimpses of adult content can make it rough going for some viewers. It’s a winner all the way.

Northerner Jack Carter (Michael Caine) is an immaculate dresser who works as a killer for London gangsters. He plans to run away with Anna (Britt Eklund), the wife of his boss Gerald Fletcher (Terence Rigby). Against advice Jack goes to Newcastle to find out what killed his brother Frank. He comes up against silence at every turn. His niece Doreen (Petra Markham) doesn’t yield much information, and Frank’s girlfriend Margaret (Dorothy White) avoids conversation altogether. Only the young bartender Keith Lacey (Alun Armstrong) offers to lend Jack assistance.

Jack wastes no time digging into the doings of the local mob, offending his old buddy Eric Paice (Ian Hendry) and irritating a former liaison, Albert Swift (Glynn Edwards). When these men avoid him he invades the homes of gang leaders Cliff Brumby and Cyril Kinnear (Bryan Mosley & John Osborne). Mob thugs try to rough up Jack or run him out of town, but he repeatedly beats them at their own games. The ones that suffer most are Keith Lacey and Edna Garfoot (Rosemarie Dunham), a landlady who takes a liking to Jack. When Jack leans on Kinnear’s mistress Glenda (Geraldine Moffat) the truth finally comes out about what happened to Frank. That sparks Jack’s cold-blooded revenge.

Get Carter scores big on every level. Jack espouses the classic criminal code: hit them first, hit them hard, and keep on hitting them. Good storytelling and believable characters allow us to keep watching these thoroughly reprehensible criminals and their parasites. Caine’s Carter walks tall among this human vermin, which include a number of corrupt, greedy and compromised women. At first he can’t even get straight answers from what remains of his estranged family. But killers don’t come any colder. He’s not concerned that his quest puts his innocent new acquaintances Keith and Edna in harm’s way.

Michael Caine is surrounded by an impressive array of UK talent. Favorite Ian Hendry gets second billing. Star Britt Eklund appears in just a couple of scenes, but they’re choice cuts. The scene where Carter and Anna conduct telephone sex while Edna listens must have set some kind of precedent; other cultural shockers of 1971 (The Devils,  A Clockwork Orange) were so intent on big outrages that Carter’s focus on such sordid intimacies now seems brilliant in its frankness. Elsewhere in the film, a porn slide show reveals glimpses of X-rated imagery that some audiences of 1971 might not have recognized. The John Osborne who plays the depraved mob boss Kinnear is none other than the  famous playwright, the father of the ‘Angry Young Man’ trend that helped launch the English New Wave of the 1960s.

Remarkably evocative locations were found in the industrial town of Newcastle, showing the cobbled streets and row houses that (we are told) have since been replaced by newer housing. Jack Carter roams the wet sidewalks and grimy back alleys, and tangles with Kinnear’s thugs down in the more modern section of town. Cliff Brumby is developing a restaurant in a high-rise, leveraging his ill-gotten loot to become a respectable member of society. One gangster throws weekly drug and sex parties at his lavish country estate, while another is furious to find his daughter using his house for an anything-goes beer bash.

Cinematographer Wolfgang Suschitzky lends scenes flavor and realism, making excellent use of rough lighting in a rooming house and long lenses at a horse race. First-time director Mike Hodges  (Pulp,  Flash Gordon) manages a flawless ‘you are there’ quality in gloomy rooms and under overcast skies. A barroom catfight between a lady singer and a jealous girlfriend is almost as raucous as the one in Caine’s earlier  Alfie. Caught in bed, Carter uses a shotgun to escort two Newcastle thugs out of his rooming house, walking into the street naked just as a local parade passes. A later shootout on a ferry dock drags an unlucky woman to an unexpectedly macabre fate. Carter isn’t rattled by either confrontation; he doesn’t so much as bat an eye.

The thrill of seeing crooks get their just desserts is half the fun of gangster movies like  Point Blank. But by the end of Get Carter we can see that not even the top criminals enjoy much freedom in what they do, and everybody else is just trying to survive. Jack Carter is no different. The moment he ignores his boss’s advice and pokes his nose into the affairs up North, he has broken his unwritten contract. Get Carter has a grim finish but not really a nihilistic one. Jack Carter is a charismatic thug, yes. But if he thought he deserved better, he was fooling himself.

The Warner Archive Collection 4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray of Get Carter is a rich showcase for Mike Hodges’ direction and the cool cinematography of Wolfgang Schuschitsky ( Ring of Bright Water). The shallow focus tricks and telephoto lenses deliver a truly oppressive look. Roy Budd’s jazzy music score is unexpectedly good, adding small touches to quiet scenes as well.

Warners has retained some of the extras from their DVD release of 2000, but not its music-only track. Other extras come from a 2022 BFI 4K release. Michael Caine, director Hodges and cameraman Suschitzsky contribute to an excellent commentary. Hodges talks about the swift pace of production, which spanned only 36 weeks from inception to finished product. He deplores some replacement dubbing that producer Michael Klinger did in Hollywood, to clarify what’s said in the first scene. This 4K remaster reverts to the original dialogue choices. Hodges also points out a key visual clue that he says proves that Carter was in serious trouble as soon as he left London.

Michael Caine offers his own observations. He says that real underworld villains see themselves as ordinary people with ordinary problems. Caine also notes that only actors in movies react broadly to shocking sights — in real life, people witnessing terrible events tend not to react, but instead stare in dumb shock. Veteran documentary cameraman Suschitzsky tells us that he lit the picture as if it were in B&W, modeling people with light to set them apart from their backgrounds. He remarks on the difference of filming with a truly photogenic star, whose presence commands and energizes the screen. Caine uses less makeup in this role, and when he walks into close-up we can see his freckled face quite clearly.

Some trailers are included. We really appreciate the feature subtitles — only an expert on local dialects would follow every dialogue line. That makes us ask — are England’s distinctive regional dialects fading?

Helpful CineSavant correspondent Jeff Nelson recently cleared up the soundtrack differences in the original and ‘U.S. friendly’ versions of Get Carter. He sent along an actual transcript:

“Glenn:
the older Blu-rays of Get Carter presented the opening scene in its dubbed-for-America incarnation. The old DVD had restored the original, more heavily-accented Cockney audio for that one scene. It’s not a deal-breaker for me, but it should be noted. Here is a quick guide.”

The original audio:

Gerald: We don’t want you to go up the north, Jack.
Jack: No?
Gerald: You work for us, Jack. We have connections in those parts. I’d hate to see you screw ’em up. What’s that, a python?
Gerald: What you going for?
Jack: To find out what happened.
Gerald: Some hard nuts operate up there, Jack. They won’t take kindly to someone from London poking his bugle in.
Jack: Too bad.
Gerald: I smell trouble, boy.

The dubbed and slightly rewritten American audio:

Gerald: We don’t want you to go up the north, Jack.
Jack: No?
Gerald: You work for us, Jack. You know we’re connected with the Newcastle mob. I’d hate you to screw it up. What’s that, a python?
Gerald: What you going for?
Jack: To find out what happened.
Gerald: Look, your brother’s dead and gone. They’re hard nuts up there, Jack. They won’t take kindly to someone from London poking his nose in.
Jack: Too bad.
Gerald: Remember they’re killers… just like you.

The scene also has laughing added throughout in the dubbed version. — Jeff Nelson

If you like this kind of movie we offer the following British Crime Tales for investigation, with links to CineSavant reviews:

Postwar classics

They Made Me a Rugitive,  Brighton Rock,  Odd Man Out,  Hell is a City,  It Always Rains on Sunday,  Night and the City,  No Orchids for Miss Blandish,  Appointment with Crime,  The Frightened City,  The Criminal,  The League of Gentlemen,  Green for Danger

More Modern attractions

Robbery,  Villain,  Mona Lisa,  The Long Good Friday,  Croupier,  The Squeeze,  Sexy Beast,  Gumshoe.

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

Get Carter
4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray rates:
Movie: Excellent
Video: Excellent
Sound: Excellent
Supplements:
2022 introduction by Michael Caine
Older audio commentary with Michael Caine, director Hodges & Cinematographer Suschinsky
2022 audio commentary with Kim Newman & Barry Forshaw
Mike Hodges in Conversation
The Sound of Composer Roy Budd
Don’t Trust Boys with actress Petra Markham
Klinger on Klinger with Tony Klinger, the son of the producer
2022 BFI Re-release trailer
Deaf and Hearing-impaired Friendly? YES; Subtitles: English (feature only)
Packaging: One 4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray in Keep case
Reviewed: September 6, 2025
(7370get)

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