Michael Caine’s film career has been erratic to say the least, but few would deny that he’s rarely been better than as London gangster Jack Carter, venturing up to Newcastle to attend his brother’s funeral and investigate the mysterious circumstances of the death. His vendetta brings him into contact with some nasty local operators and a seedy soft porn racket in which his family turn out to be implicated. On the train journey up north, Carter can be seen reading Raymond Chandler’s Farewell My Lovely, though this book looks less like a note of homage than a signal that what we have here, by contrast, is a uniquely British thriller. Indeed, it now looks like a landmark in the history of the British crime movie, its punchy script and direction and relentlessly bleak vision significantly influencing later films like The Long Good Friday, Mona Lisa and Stormy Monday. Just as pleasing, though, are the off-the-wall touches which writer-director Mike Hodges occassionally uses to lighten the grittily realistic tone: the semi-comic scene in which Carter walks out naked into the street to fend off a couple of hoodlums; the casting of John Osborne as a camp and wealthy crime baron; perhaps most of all, the way the Newcastle locations are made to appear so strange. The way Carter reacts, he might as well be visiting the moon.

U.K., 1971.
New 35mm print.
Colour,
112 mins.