Lists
- ranked 16 in BFI 100
- ranked 37 in TV Cream's Top 100 Films
- ranked 68 in The Guardian Top 100 Films
- ranked 76 in Empire 100 Greatest Movies (1999)
- ranked 88 in Total Film's 100 Greatest Movies Of All Time
- ranked 225 in Empire 500 Greatest Movies (2008)
- ranked 419 in They Shoot Pictures, Don't They? 1000 Greatest Films (March 2006)
- ranked 440 in They Shoot Pictures, Don't They? 1000 Greatest Films (August 2005)
- ranked 478 in They Shoot Pictures, Don't They? 1000 Greatest Films (December 2006)
- one of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die
- one of Guardian 1,000 films to see before you die
- one of The New York Times Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made
Jack Carter is a London gangster in Newcastle to find out who killed his brother Frank, getting it on with every girl he meets along the way. It's not Hollywood: it's dank, muted and pallid grey.
It's realistic, I suppose, but that makes it dull: knifing a man in the stomach in a dull English morning doesn't have the same action potential as a John Woo shootout. The end result is like Shaft by way of Ken Loach.
Carter isn't Sweet Sweetback, and his soundtrack lacks funk, but he's the English equivalent. I'm thankful that Get Carter didn't launch a wave of Britsploitative films about scrawny sex machines with all the bad teeth, but one is quite bad enough.