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When his union-scale role in the 1997 police drama Copland didn’t constitute a hoped-for career renaissance, Sylvester Stallone could afford to sit back on his Rocky Rambo residuals (and maybe a Japanese TV commercial or two) while he regrouped. Must be nice. It could turn out to be a smart move, too. Keeping stardom (especially when someone is showing age around the eyes, if not the deltoids) is tougher than attaining it; yet another comeback attempt could be disastrous if not carefully considered.
So he opted to take the Gritty Antihero route, which worked pretty well for Mel Gibson in Payback when he needed a recharge after two questionable projects in a row (Conspiracy Theory and Lethal Weapon 4). Updating a lurid 1971 Cockney noirfest starring Michael Caine as a vengeful thug, Get Carter casts Stallone as the titular Jack, who dishes out full-time professional meanness for a Vegas mobster. When his brother Richie dies in a questionable Yuletide car accident, residual family honor draws Jack back to Seattle after a long absence. He shows up at the funeral and with unceremonious immediacy begins muscling mourners for info. Richie’s widow (Miranda Richardson) is initially resentful – “Where were you when he was alive?” – but his daughter Doreen (Rachel Leigh Cook) hints that there may indeed be a great big ol’ mess just begging to be dredged up.
Which Jack, oozing polite menace, is prepared to do. His technique is simple: he grabs people, and if they don’t talk he escorts them to a place – whether a literal spatial location or an unfamiliar side-street of pain -- where they will. (It’s a blizzard of testosterone, sure, but then they probably don’t have much use for Miss Manners in Vegas.) He’s making progress, uncovering complications that lead from his former associates Cyrus (Mickey Rourke, itching to show off his boxing skills) and Cliff (Michael Caine) to a billionaire software whizkid (Alan Cumming) to Richie’s mistress (played by Rhona Mitra, who was the original model for Lara Croft – no lie), then back to Doreen. Meanwhile, the Vegas don is exceedingly miffed to learn his hired gorilla has been shuffling cards with his favorite croupier (Gretchen Mol), and jealously dispatches a couple mooks to bring Jack home.
Get Carter is an exercise in attitude more than story, surviving an overcomplicated plot that prevents it from being more compelling. It also gets the better of fledgling director Stephen T. Kay, who insists on damp, dark, fuzzy, low-color, high-contrast jump-cut atmosphere, set to Moby and Jellybean tracks, that will probably be held up in the future as an example of what was trendy this year -- or maybe that’s just how Seattle gets at Christmas. But a nice consistent tension arises from not knowing when Jack is going to erupt, since he always looks determined to mix it up with everybody. Call it Stallone’s come-halfway-back. B-
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