Stallone Has Little Time for Feelings in ‘Get Carter’

What’s with these Seattle people anyway? This guy, built like Superman anddressed like a high-class gangster, glares at them and speaks to them in a deep, serious voice that suggests none too subtly that he means business. But nobody takes him seriously, which makes him very, very angry.

These intense encounters run throughout the “Get Carter” remake, which was heavily promoted by Warner Bros. but opened Friday without benefit of press previews. These encounters are of course setups designed to allow Sylvester Stallone as Carter to express his rage physically.

Stallone’s most stalwart fans most likely will enjoy these bravura displays of violence, but there are so many and they are so showy that they undercut a film that actually has more going for it than most Stallone vehicles. He actually is well-cast as a seasoned Las Vegas underworld enforcer who returns home to Seattle after an absence of five years or so to attend the funeral of his younger brother.

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He is not welcomed with open arms by his sister-in-law (Miranda Richardson), who has a where-were-you-when-we-needed-you? attitude. He’s greeted with even less enthusiasm by a raft of shady types when he starts questioning the circumstances of his brother’s death in an apparent drunk-driving accident. His teenage niece (Rachael Leigh Cook), to whom he is “only a picture on the piano,” nonetheless starts warming to him enough to tell him that her late father hadn’t been drinking in years.

About the time Carter left town, his brother became manager of a nightclub owned by a suave, canny Brit (Michael Caine, star of the 1971 “Get Carter”). Apparently, the brother’s life thereafter proceeded without incident until his death. Carter’s inquiries turn up a nerdy computer zillionaire (Alan Cumming), who had turned to an old Carter henchman (Mickey Rourke) to supply him with girls. (You can be sure Stallone and Rourke display lots of swagger when they go toe to toe.) In return the computer genius has provided his pimp with some form of online service, not realizing that it would enable him to peddle porn on the Internet. Carter will have to deal with assorted other sleazeballs to get at the truth about his brother’s death.

Weathered but superfit as ever, Stallone has the right world-weary look and is the right age for a professional hired gun to be made vulnerable by intimations of mortality, intimations that send him down the path of vengeance even as it sparks a yearning for redemption. Stallone skillfully expresses Carter’s isolation, his awakening paternal feelings of concern for his niece, his sense that he has let his brother down in not staying around to steer him clear of the underworld. Scenes between Stallone and Cook are quite affecting under Stephen Kay’s direction. The film could use more such scenes, but Kay and screenwriter David McKenna keep punching up the formula action at the expense of the reflection their hero is beginning to develop.

Although this “Get Carter” has its share of cliched, tough-talk dialogue, it is not a terrible movie, and Stallone has appeared in far worse. It’s just that, although diverting, it’s too routine for its own good, despite its sleek look and splendidly photographed Seattle locations--and this is what Warners must have concluded too. Once there was a time not so long ago when movies that opened without previews, thus avoiding opening-day reviews, were virtually always low-budget exploitation pictures. “Get Carter” is the second recent major studio release with a veteran star to open cold nationwide. The first was the Richard Gere-Winona Ryder starrer “Autumn in New York,” unabashedly old-fashioned yet effective, if only on its own terms.

Ironically, neither version of “Get Carter,” even though the stylish first interpretation enjoys cult status, is the most persuasive film made from Ted Lewis’ novel, “Jack’s Return Home.” It’s the modestly budgeted 1973 “Hit Man,” written and directed by George Armitage.

Made as part of the burgeoning blaxploitation cycle of that time, it starred Bernie Casey, who investigated his brother’s death, not so much out of revenge but from his lack of faith in the police. The talented, underutilized Armitage is best known for the more recent “Miami Blues” with Alec Baldwin.

* MPAA-rated: R, for violence, language, some sexuality and drug content. Times guidelines: considerable action movie-style violence, language, adult themes and situations.

‘Get Carter’

Sylvester Stallone: Jack Carter

Miranda Richardson: Gloria

Rachael Leigh Cook: Doreen

Michael Caine: Cliff Brumby

A Warner Bros. release of a Morgan Creek Productions and Franchise Pictures presentation of a Franchise Pictures and Canton Co. production. Director Stephen Kay. Producers Mark Canton, Elie Samaha, Neil Canton. Executive producers Andrew Stevens, Don Carmody, Bill Gerber, Ashok Amritaj, Steve Bing, Arthur Silver. Screenplay by David McKenna; based on the novel “Jack’s Return Home” by Ted Lewis. Cinematographer Mauro Fiore. Editor Jerry Greenberg. Music Tyler Bates. Costumes Julie Weiss. Production designer Charles J.H. Wood. Art director Helen Jarvis. Set decorator Elizabeth Wilcox. Running time: 1 hour, 43 minutes.

In general release.