Thursday 14 August 2008
Get Carter (1971)
Gritty, suspenseful, uncompromising. An iconic anti-hero fueled by fury and loathing. A perennially quotable script. Classy, eye-catching direction. Great performances all round. A tremendous soundtrack. A brilliant ending. Frankly, it's flawless - 10/10.
Hit Man (1972)
"You're a big cat, but don't try selling me no wolf ticket"
This is great fun when you know the original version because you can enjoy the "jived up" script and- I imagine- it is an enjoyable enough film if you haven't.
It basically follows the pattern of Mike Hodges' 'Get Carter' but relocated to the US and with the addition of a scene showing a drunken Tackett (Carter) at his brother's wake. American Footballer Bernie Casey does well enough in the title role, Pam Grier makes the most of her part, Sam Laws has a ball in his supporting role and Roger E. Moseley is fine as baby Huey. There's not much else to say really- it's a blaxploitation flick: superhuman black man thwarts all wrong-doers, shags nigh on eighty women in a weekend, calls everyone a nigger or a honky, dresses in a way that would stand out at a tranny convention and has his own funky wah-wah theme tune.
It's entertaining but it really isn't very good. 4/10.
This is great fun when you know the original version because you can enjoy the "jived up" script and- I imagine- it is an enjoyable enough film if you haven't.
It basically follows the pattern of Mike Hodges' 'Get Carter' but relocated to the US and with the addition of a scene showing a drunken Tackett (Carter) at his brother's wake. American Footballer Bernie Casey does well enough in the title role, Pam Grier makes the most of her part, Sam Laws has a ball in his supporting role and Roger E. Moseley is fine as baby Huey. There's not much else to say really- it's a blaxploitation flick: superhuman black man thwarts all wrong-doers, shags nigh on eighty women in a weekend, calls everyone a nigger or a honky, dresses in a way that would stand out at a tranny convention and has his own funky wah-wah theme tune.
It's entertaining but it really isn't very good. 4/10.
Get Carter (2000)
Tonight is a special night, at my mate Handsome Gav's house we're watching the three versions of Get Carter that we know about in reverse chronological order.
First up, Stallone's remake. I've never seen this but I remember Stallone doing a big cover story with Arena magazine ahead of the movie's scheduled cinematic release. In the interview Stallone was asked whether his Carter died at the end as Michael Caine's had in the original. His reply was that "he has a spiritual death and rebirth". Oh dear. The cinematic release was pulled then and this film went straight to DVD. Plenty to be wary of there.
I'm not going to dwell too long on this film, it is as woefully bad as I'd imagined, but I will just comment quickly on the liberties they've taken with the original. The dead brother Frank is renamed Richie for no apparent reason, his wife is brought back to life in the shape of Miranda Richardson (there's someone who really should know better), the gangster Kinnear- now renamed Jeremy Kinnear- is a gay billionaire computer programmer, Carter's Boss Les (formerly Sid) Fletcher gets to know about Carter and his girlfriend fifteen minutes in.
What they appear to have decided in conceiving this remake is that the original would benefit from a washed-out, anaemic, colourless visual style and looking like a car advert. In fully bringing the concept up to date, they roped in hot music producer Jellybean Benitez to add some dance beats to Roy Budd's superb original soundtrack. Jellybean is the man who wrote Madonna's "Holiday"- a song that is about as old as I am. Couldn't they get anyone better than that for fuck's sake?
The iconic moments in the original film are reproduced here in a sadly diluted form- "you're a big man but you're in bad shape" is delivered by a seated Stallone in a calm manner to a standing Caine cameoing in Alf Roberts' part (Stallone had to be seated I suppose, he's giving away about six inches to Caine) and "your eyes look like pissholes in the snow" becomes the frankly nonsensical "you look like cat's piss in the snow". They have attempted, I suppose, to create their own memorable dialogue but it is insipid and uninspired. Several times Stallone threatens to "take it to another level", Alan Cummings' "you know why I like golf?" speech is especially awful and only Stallone's "it's good to be home" after duffing up a local is at all interesting.
What they've done here is to shake up the script (change the order and several of the character names swap places in the script) it's a puny rewrite. By revealing that Carter can never go back from the outset the suspense that made the original is lost, instead we get a watered-down Carter (Caine's was driven by blind hatred, Stallone's is driven by a sense of remorse) who talks throughout about doing something right for once and making up for his mistakes. The dumbed-down script where a bloke from Scrubs appears throughout to talk to Carter and explain like a child's narrator what has happened so far is insulting. I got so angry watching this that it isn't funny.
Positives are very few and far between- Caine really gives his part every chance and that's the only one that I can think of. One good point, therefore, 1/10.get-carter-soundtrack-2000-score
Tonight is a special night, at my mate Handsome Gav's house we're watching the three versions of Get Carter that we know about in reverse chronological order.
First up, Stallone's remake. I've never seen this but I remember Stallone doing a big cover story with Arena magazine ahead of the movie's scheduled cinematic release. In the interview Stallone was asked whether his Carter died at the end as Michael Caine's had in the original. His reply was that "he has a spiritual death and rebirth". Oh dear. The cinematic release was pulled then and this film went straight to DVD. Plenty to be wary of there.
I'm not going to dwell too long on this film, it is as woefully bad as I'd imagined, but I will just comment quickly on the liberties they've taken with the original. The dead brother Frank is renamed Richie for no apparent reason, his wife is brought back to life in the shape of Miranda Richardson (there's someone who really should know better), the gangster Kinnear- now renamed Jeremy Kinnear- is a gay billionaire computer programmer, Carter's Boss Les (formerly Sid) Fletcher gets to know about Carter and his girlfriend fifteen minutes in.
What they appear to have decided in conceiving this remake is that the original would benefit from a washed-out, anaemic, colourless visual style and looking like a car advert. In fully bringing the concept up to date, they roped in hot music producer Jellybean Benitez to add some dance beats to Roy Budd's superb original soundtrack. Jellybean is the man who wrote Madonna's "Holiday"- a song that is about as old as I am. Couldn't they get anyone better than that for fuck's sake?
The iconic moments in the original film are reproduced here in a sadly diluted form- "you're a big man but you're in bad shape" is delivered by a seated Stallone in a calm manner to a standing Caine cameoing in Alf Roberts' part (Stallone had to be seated I suppose, he's giving away about six inches to Caine) and "your eyes look like pissholes in the snow" becomes the frankly nonsensical "you look like cat's piss in the snow". They have attempted, I suppose, to create their own memorable dialogue but it is insipid and uninspired. Several times Stallone threatens to "take it to another level", Alan Cummings' "you know why I like golf?" speech is especially awful and only Stallone's "it's good to be home" after duffing up a local is at all interesting.
What they've done here is to shake up the script (change the order and several of the character names swap places in the script) it's a puny rewrite. By revealing that Carter can never go back from the outset the suspense that made the original is lost, instead we get a watered-down Carter (Caine's was driven by blind hatred, Stallone's is driven by a sense of remorse) who talks throughout about doing something right for once and making up for his mistakes. The dumbed-down script where a bloke from Scrubs appears throughout to talk to Carter and explain like a child's narrator what has happened so far is insulting. I got so angry watching this that it isn't funny.
Positives are very few and far between- Caine really gives his part every chance and that's the only one that I can think of. One good point, therefore, 1/10.
First up, Stallone's remake. I've never seen this but I remember Stallone doing a big cover story with Arena magazine ahead of the movie's scheduled cinematic release. In the interview Stallone was asked whether his Carter died at the end as Michael Caine's had in the original. His reply was that "he has a spiritual death and rebirth". Oh dear. The cinematic release was pulled then and this film went straight to DVD. Plenty to be wary of there.
I'm not going to dwell too long on this film, it is as woefully bad as I'd imagined, but I will just comment quickly on the liberties they've taken with the original. The dead brother Frank is renamed Richie for no apparent reason, his wife is brought back to life in the shape of Miranda Richardson (there's someone who really should know better), the gangster Kinnear- now renamed Jeremy Kinnear- is a gay billionaire computer programmer, Carter's Boss Les (formerly Sid) Fletcher gets to know about Carter and his girlfriend fifteen minutes in.
What they appear to have decided in conceiving this remake is that the original would benefit from a washed-out, anaemic, colourless visual style and looking like a car advert. In fully bringing the concept up to date, they roped in hot music producer Jellybean Benitez to add some dance beats to Roy Budd's superb original soundtrack. Jellybean is the man who wrote Madonna's "Holiday"- a song that is about as old as I am. Couldn't they get anyone better than that for fuck's sake?
The iconic moments in the original film are reproduced here in a sadly diluted form- "you're a big man but you're in bad shape" is delivered by a seated Stallone in a calm manner to a standing Caine cameoing in Alf Roberts' part (Stallone had to be seated I suppose, he's giving away about six inches to Caine) and "your eyes look like pissholes in the snow" becomes the frankly nonsensical "you look like cat's piss in the snow". They have attempted, I suppose, to create their own memorable dialogue but it is insipid and uninspired. Several times Stallone threatens to "take it to another level", Alan Cummings' "you know why I like golf?" speech is especially awful and only Stallone's "it's good to be home" after duffing up a local is at all interesting.
What they've done here is to shake up the script (change the order and several of the character names swap places in the script) it's a puny rewrite. By revealing that Carter can never go back from the outset the suspense that made the original is lost, instead we get a watered-down Carter (Caine's was driven by blind hatred, Stallone's is driven by a sense of remorse) who talks throughout about doing something right for once and making up for his mistakes. The dumbed-down script where a bloke from Scrubs appears throughout to talk to Carter and explain like a child's narrator what has happened so far is insulting. I got so angry watching this that it isn't funny.
Positives are very few and far between- Caine really gives his part every chance and that's the only one that I can think of. One good point, therefore, 1/10.get-carter-soundtrack-2000-score
Tonight is a special night, at my mate Handsome Gav's house we're watching the three versions of Get Carter that we know about in reverse chronological order.
First up, Stallone's remake. I've never seen this but I remember Stallone doing a big cover story with Arena magazine ahead of the movie's scheduled cinematic release. In the interview Stallone was asked whether his Carter died at the end as Michael Caine's had in the original. His reply was that "he has a spiritual death and rebirth". Oh dear. The cinematic release was pulled then and this film went straight to DVD. Plenty to be wary of there.
I'm not going to dwell too long on this film, it is as woefully bad as I'd imagined, but I will just comment quickly on the liberties they've taken with the original. The dead brother Frank is renamed Richie for no apparent reason, his wife is brought back to life in the shape of Miranda Richardson (there's someone who really should know better), the gangster Kinnear- now renamed Jeremy Kinnear- is a gay billionaire computer programmer, Carter's Boss Les (formerly Sid) Fletcher gets to know about Carter and his girlfriend fifteen minutes in.
What they appear to have decided in conceiving this remake is that the original would benefit from a washed-out, anaemic, colourless visual style and looking like a car advert. In fully bringing the concept up to date, they roped in hot music producer Jellybean Benitez to add some dance beats to Roy Budd's superb original soundtrack. Jellybean is the man who wrote Madonna's "Holiday"- a song that is about as old as I am. Couldn't they get anyone better than that for fuck's sake?
The iconic moments in the original film are reproduced here in a sadly diluted form- "you're a big man but you're in bad shape" is delivered by a seated Stallone in a calm manner to a standing Caine cameoing in Alf Roberts' part (Stallone had to be seated I suppose, he's giving away about six inches to Caine) and "your eyes look like pissholes in the snow" becomes the frankly nonsensical "you look like cat's piss in the snow". They have attempted, I suppose, to create their own memorable dialogue but it is insipid and uninspired. Several times Stallone threatens to "take it to another level", Alan Cummings' "you know why I like golf?" speech is especially awful and only Stallone's "it's good to be home" after duffing up a local is at all interesting.
What they've done here is to shake up the script (change the order and several of the character names swap places in the script) it's a puny rewrite. By revealing that Carter can never go back from the outset the suspense that made the original is lost, instead we get a watered-down Carter (Caine's was driven by blind hatred, Stallone's is driven by a sense of remorse) who talks throughout about doing something right for once and making up for his mistakes. The dumbed-down script where a bloke from Scrubs appears throughout to talk to Carter and explain like a child's narrator what has happened so far is insulting. I got so angry watching this that it isn't funny.
Positives are very few and far between- Caine really gives his part every chance and that's the only one that I can think of. One good point, therefore, 1/10.
Saturday 2 August 2008
The Most Dangerous Game (1932)
Filmed concurrently with the much-lauded (and rightly so) King Kong, and sharing cast members, crew, locations and a basic storyline this has become something of a lost film. Indeed, I happened across it in a pound shop and had never heard of it before. But it's great.
Joel McCrea plays a famous bounty hunter shipwrecked on a mystery island. He goes to a mystery castle where his host, the urbane but sinister Count Zoroff (Leslie Banks), introduces him to fellow shipwreck survivors Fay Wray and her boorish drunken brother Robert Armstrong. Helped in no small part by the music of Max Steiner the film switches easily from the opening character establishment to an exciting chase film through overgrown jungle and swamp-land as the hunter becomes the hunted. The performance of Banks as the maniacal Zoroff is a treat and it is also interesting to note the ahead-of-its-time critique on big game hunting with the trophy room stuffed with humans (apparently a better DVD version with a further ten minutes or more in the trophy room is available) and McCrea opining "now I know how the animals felt" refers back to the opening conversations on 'the inconsistency of civilization': animals hunt for food and are considered savage, we hunt for sport and consider ourselves civilized.
All in all this is a great film- albeit on a shoddy DVD transfer- exciting, pacey, insightful and with a great climax (notwithstanding a fight consisting largely of wild slaps to the upper arms). 7/10.
Joel McCrea plays a famous bounty hunter shipwrecked on a mystery island. He goes to a mystery castle where his host, the urbane but sinister Count Zoroff (Leslie Banks), introduces him to fellow shipwreck survivors Fay Wray and her boorish drunken brother Robert Armstrong. Helped in no small part by the music of Max Steiner the film switches easily from the opening character establishment to an exciting chase film through overgrown jungle and swamp-land as the hunter becomes the hunted. The performance of Banks as the maniacal Zoroff is a treat and it is also interesting to note the ahead-of-its-time critique on big game hunting with the trophy room stuffed with humans (apparently a better DVD version with a further ten minutes or more in the trophy room is available) and McCrea opining "now I know how the animals felt" refers back to the opening conversations on 'the inconsistency of civilization': animals hunt for food and are considered savage, we hunt for sport and consider ourselves civilized.
All in all this is a great film- albeit on a shoddy DVD transfer- exciting, pacey, insightful and with a great climax (notwithstanding a fight consisting largely of wild slaps to the upper arms). 7/10.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)