Day 58: "You don't fix things Jack, you break them."

I understand Hollywood's need to remake great, or even good movies from the past.  In the "artistic" sense, they want to expose a new audience to movies that my not be readily available, or through the generation gap, not easily understood.  In reality, they see dollar signs.  Being a fan of the British mob movies such as The Long Good Friday, Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels, and Layer Cake, I was interested to see the United States' take on the genre.   Get Carter is a remake of the film of the same name from 1971.  The original was a great British crime drama that had a tight, edgy story, great acting, and solid direction.  The remake, to be blunt, had none of these things.  I'll never understand how the story in a remake is worse than what the original was.  The filmmakers have a script and plot that was already successful; updating the dialogue for a more modern audience should not change the story.  The action in this was predictable, and in a couple of places, redundant (two separate car chases within 10 minutes of each other?).  Essentially this is a story of Jack Carter (a mob enforcer in Vegas) and his quest for information and revenge on those who murdered his estranged brother.

Starring Sylvester Stallone as Jack, he plays him as a very cool professional, even when high emotion would be involved.  C'mon Sly, you can do better.  The remaining cast includes: Miranda Richardson, Rachael Leigh Cook, Mickey Rourke, and Alan Cumming.  In the twist but of casting, they actually got Michael Caine to play a role in this (he was great, as usual).  You'd think with the original Carter in the movie, the filmmakers might have picked his brain for some ideas or experiences from the first; I guess not.

I actually did see what direction they wanted to go with this, but in the end, it was slow to develop, the characters: uni-dimensional, and the action and fights: uninspired.  It could have been really good and a credit to its predecessor and the revenge genre as a whole, but in the end it was just boring.  5.75/10

See you tomorrow, and GO WATCH A MOVIE!!