Director: Mike Hodges
Cast: Michael Caine, Ian Hendry, Britt Ekland, John Osborne
Have I Seen it Before: Never, but oddly enough, I have the most profound memory of, the year 2000. I was a high school sophomore, knew I wanted to make movies, and the generally reviled remake with Stallone in the title role was released. In the absolutely transcendent collection of screenplays housed at the Tulsa Central Library* was a tiny paperback printing of the screenplay for this film. Absorbing every script I could get my hands on, I read it cover to cover. It seemed so cool, being lethal and uncaring, and more than willing to smooth everything over by throwing a few notes at the malcontents.
Those are the sorts of things with which a sixteen-year-old is impressed.
Did I Like It: And Caine is the height of cool in the movie as presented. Scowling and snakelike, it’s easy to forget with turns as Alfred Pennyworth and Ebenezer Scrooge to Muppets, it’s hard to forget he would have made a gutsy, spot-on James Bond back in the day.
The film, too, largely threads that tricky needle of appearing largely timeless. With it’s possibly British preoccupation with shadowy photography and subdued fashions, there are a few fleeting moments where the film feels like a product of the early seventies, but it is an early seventies that feels closer to our own time. It is a thin, ruthless film, not unlike it’s hateful protagonist.
But then, it also has a finale that is equal parts inevitable and surprising. For all of his bluster, Carter (Caine) is obliterated despite his successful revenge. Can a film be bleakly violent, and absolutely hopeless in its outlook, and somehow still deeply moral in its handling of fate? Probably not anymore.
And, in case you think that is more “old man yelling at a cloud” fodder, that was probably (and I thought was) true back in 2000 when Stallone took over the role and I was sixteen.
*Which, naturally, in the name of progress and renovation has been relegated to their basement, as some of the volumes clearly don’t look like they were published in the last six months. The books are still available, just not available to browse, so that the library can also have a flight simulator, apparently. It’s a crying shame. In other news: old man yells at cloud.