Such a frustrating disappointment

People are voting emotionally.

Fresh and Exciting

As Good As It Gets

As soon as I saw a quick cutaway shot of the wheels of a steam locomotive (when Carter was riding on a modern Diesel/Electric train) less than four minutes into the movie, I knew this movie was going to be terrible. Why on earth would they choose to use blatantly wrong footage?

Get Carter (2000): Dir: Stephen Kay / Cast: Sylvester Stallone, Mickey Rourke, Rachel Leigh Cook, Michael Caine, Alan Cumming: Heavy advertizing showcases mindless violence and complete idiocy. Forget Carter and find something of worth to watch. Sylvester Stallone plays a bad man named Jack Carter who slaps people around. That in itself must have taken extreme thought from the screenwriter. He is back in town to attend his brother's funeral whose wife wonders why he cares at all. He doesn't buy it as an accident and gets the real deal on a surveillance camera where a disc is passed. Scenes involving Carter's other job are a distraction and only serve for violence. Director Stephen Kay handles the action with fine locations but this is just a bigger budget and more violent version of the 1971 original starring Michael Caine, which likely had a more detailed screenplay. Story is almost entirely smash, boom, bang, pow, blam, yank, ka-boom! Stallone sounds less intelligent with each spoken word. He is there to fight and nothing more. Mickey Rourke plays Stallone's punching bag. Rachel Leigh Cook plays a confused teenager. She must be really confused to agree to be part of this garbage. Cameo by Michael Caine who really should have declined seeing that this is an insult. Forget Carter and leave the theatre with dignity. Score: 2 / 10

I'll keep this short and sweet. First off, Sly, does not deserve a Razzie for this. It's a great comeback, after his bestest in 98's Copland, and he's very good in this role, a trifle menacing, yes. In fact I'd rather watch Sly than Caine, who ironically plays a shady villain in this. Caine's dull expressions and deadpan looks he brought to the Carter role, though indeed, he was much more menacing, just somehow created a real dullness, where Stallone adds a lot of flare to the role, (the actors business) someone you don't want double cross, one guy, so lucky for having Carter spare him, was a moment I found gruelingly tense. Again it's family vengeance for Jack Carter, who leans on people who are late with their payments by use of physical force. One term to describe these heavies are called Shylocks. Stallone is given great dialogue, and has some great acting support from Miranda Richardson, very strong, Caine, character actor, John Mcginley as one of Sly's own, and another baddie Mickey Rourke, no longer a pretty face. He's given some great dialogue too. Jack who's brother was caught up in some dirty dealings involving prostitution and making sex tapes, his need to get to the bottom of this really grows, especially when his niece (Rachel Leigh Cook-very good) is caught up in it. Then he really steams. Here's a guy who's not gonna stop until he finds his man, where he doesn't like outside interruptions, like from Mcginley who he pummels the s..t out of in an elevator, to the racey tune of an instrumental "Jingle Bells". Again here's a livelier remake I like better than the original, which some great action sequences, including a thrilling car chase, hey, but what's a Sly movie without action.

Some Hollywood remakes of classic Brit flicks work, to a degree (both Michael Caine films, actually) - The Italian Job and even 'Alfie', to my mind - but The Wicker Man and now, here, Get Carter, just don't.Why? Well, to make them different enough and presumably for American audiences, all semblance of what made them originally work flies out the window. Michael Caine was a believable bloke next door who was pushed and forced into taking the law into his own hands, not Rambo dressed as a yuppie who just has to LOOK at people and they cry...Then, they obviously thought 'stick in some British people, to make it more British', which it obviously doesn't. Miranda Richardson tries but poor old (or young) Alan Cumming is always on a lost cause as the techno-geek dot.com millionaire who's as spoilt rotten as the film is.None of the events seem to make sense, lurching from one precipice to the next and when violence (sudden, explosive, often without reason) isn't enough, some of the worst scenes I've ever witnessed, of Stallone attempting to emotionally bond with a young girl called Door-een. Even the way he says her name is haunting me now, after!I'd also forgotten that Mickey Rourke has a part in this - I strongly suspect that he wisely chooses to do the same, now that he's got his reputation and bad luck (& films) behind him. Maybe this shoddy affair was his turning point, his rock bottom?Perhaps the many faults lie with the film trying to follow the original too closely - which is where my aforementioned The Italian Job differs. The only tangible connection with both old and new in those are the Mini's, though purists might argue that the new style BMW owned Mini's in the remake aren't real Mini's etc etc.So, what we have here is a clump of the original story, crudely updated and dumped in a sea of other bits salvaged from other ill-advised ideas.