Get Carter

Jack Carter, an aging Vegas enforcer, is mad, and you don’t want to get Jack Carter mad. (Or, as he likes to say to the various malefactors who cross his path, “you don’t want to know me.”) If you do, he is very likely to punch you, or maybe even shoot you. Unfortunately, it is a little hard to see just what Jack is so mad about in this witless and leaden remake of the 1971 film of the same name (which in turn is based upon a novel called “Jack’s Return Home” by Ted Lewis). As best as I can figure, a bunch of lowlifes did something bad to Jack’s niece Doreen, so Doreen’s father Richie (Jack’s brother) got mad (I guess it runs in the family) and so then the lowlifes killed Richie. Or something like that. Well, if you kill Jack’s brother--even one he hasn’t spoken to in five years--Jack is liable to get really mad and start punching and shooting a whole lot of people. And that’s pretty much what happens here.

In fact, that’s about all that happens. Sylvester Stallone plays Jack, and while he looks the part, and it would seem to be a good role for him, the film sinks under the weight of a truly jumbled script and some poor directorial choices by Stephen Kay. The movie is basically one long and enervating series of conversations between Jack and a bunch of other people, punctuated by fistfights, and a couple of the most tired car chases seen since “Mannix” was on TV. Thrown into the mix are a tough guy turned online porno entrepreneur (Rourke, looking pretty dangerous himself), a shady expatriate Brit (Caine, who starred in the 1971 original, a fact which is far more interesting that anything going on in the movie), and a nerdy computer geek-billionaire, not to mention Jack’s boss back in Vegas, who sends Jack’s own partner after him to teach him a lesson. (Do you need to guess who teaches who a lesson?) The computer and internet stuff seems thrown in just to make the picture timely, but writer McKenna seems to find the internet porn business a lot more sinister than I suspect it is, and he seems to lack understanding about how real-life billionaires take care of problems when they arise.

The incomprehensible relationship between most of the characters is only one of the problems that “Get Carter” has to contend with, most of which are related to the sad sack hash of a script. I call this kind of script a “desert” script, which means that the writer sets up the scenario, then there is a long slog through a desert in which nothing at all interesting happens, and then everything gets tied up in a flurry of activity at the end. What this means is that the writer had only one limited story to tell, so he can’t afford to reveal much as the movie goes on, or it would be only fifteen minutes long. Therefore, he is forced to spend a lot of time on meaningless filler, which tends to ruin whatever narrative drive the picture started with. A good thriller hands out new information all along, so we can try to guess what happened along with the protagonist. In “Get Carter,” we are in the dark, along with Jack, right up until the end. That end, when it finally does come, is strictly pedestrian stuff. Let’s just say that the picture’s 1971 roots are showing through.

Had director Kay shown a little more visual sense, and orchestrated the action scenes better, we could at least have had a decent tough guy picture. As it is, despite some nice use of the Seattle locales, he seems to be confusing noir with murkiness. Everything is gray, dark, and dingy (not to mention rainy--this is Seattle, after all), and after a while, eyestrain sets in. He further resorts to some of those MTV-style visual effects, which can be tolerated during a credit sequence, but become truly annoying during the body of the picture. (It seems like he is trying to suggest that Jack suffers from migraines. I know that by the end of the movie, I was.) Kay also muddles a lot of the action, which I am beginning to think means they didn’t want to spring for a fight choreographer. I’ll say it again: movies should make you see things more clearly, not less. It would be nice if “Get Carter” gave Stallone a breakout acting role to show what he can do, but it doesn’t. (For that, see the underappreciated “Copland.”) His character (though dressed spiffily in crisp white shirts, pale monochrome ties, and a shiny suit), is never very sympathetic.

We never really understand him, or why he suddenly takes such an interest in Richie and his family. It is also extremely off-putting to see Jack acting as judge, jury, and executioner; killing in cold blood is not necessarily a skill we want in our heroes, no matter how richly the victims may deserve it. The filmmakers should have spent more time and energy on developing the characters. They should have eliminated two or three of the villains (there are at least five, by my count) so that the central conflict carried more weight. (The rivalry between Rourke’s Paice and Jack would seem the obvious choice, but it, like everything else, is given short shrift.) In the end, it’s not much use having your hero beat up a bad guy if you don’t understand who he is or why the guy is bad. Until they figure that out, I agree: you don’t want to know Jack. (10/8/2000)