Get Carter

I truly wanted this film to be good, but as i suspected it is terrible.The film manages to wimp out at every moment that made the Caine version so hard hitting, brutal and memorable. Kay has given many of the charcters a moral compass, and from what i can see, for no other reason than that the producers obviously think an American audience need clearly drawn boundaries between who is 'good' and who is 'bad'. Stallone's burgeoning relationship with his niece (she is definitely his neice, none of the ambiguity concerning the girl's parentage in this version)is perhaps one of the most ill advised plot developments ever written. One minute he hardly knows her, the next they are big buddies. He even gives up smoking for chrissakes! Stallone's Carter is a far more sensitive man that Caine's and ultimately this is what makes the film so pedestrian. He has gone back home more in an attempt to fix the broken pieces of his own life, rather than in search of vengeance. The porno movie elements lack the genuine unpleasantness of the original, the movie balks at any realistic violence in favour of a more dumbass hollywood approach where grown men can fight for twenty minutes without collapsing from exhaustion. and what is all this rubbish about 'taking things to the next level'? This may be abit of a hastily written review, but words cannot express how crap this film is, especially when viewed in the light of the superior original. Im no film purist, (i genuinely think Money Train is a good film) but even without the memory of Hodge's film, Get Carter 2000 fails to convince. Having said that, the beefed up score (though underused) is a treat, and the title sequence on the train at the beginning is great. There is perverse pleasure to be taken in how dreadful this whole movie is, but i've seen grittier episodes of Airwolf than this.