Another mysterious death is the trigger which motivates the central character in Get Carter, a seminal gangster-revenge thriller from Mike Hodges, deservedly ranked as one of the greatest British films of the 1970s. Just as Peckinpah in the same year was pushing the boundaries of on-screen violence, so too does Get Carter take the genre in more extreme directions. Michael Caine, in one of the highlights of his career, plays London gangster Jack Carter, who returns to his hometown of Newcastle Upon Tyne to find out exactly how his brother Frank had died. Submerging himself in the seedy underworld of corruption and pornography, Carter becomes increasingly enraged by the degradation around him, and before long the level of violence begins to escalate in an ever-bloody crescendo. Get Carter is another classic example of a movie which has earned its reputation in the years following its release - back in 1971 the studio marketing campaign was woefully misjudged and the film was poorly received, but praise from the likes of Guy Ritchie and Quentin Tarantino has since seen it elevated to the position it truly deserves - a genre classic and one of the defining films of the era. As always, avoid the US remake at all costs.
