A classic

I wasn’t really sure what to expect from this flick but, since it seemed to have a decent reputation and since it was starring Michael Caine, I was quite eager to check it out. By the way, I actually saw first the remake starring Sylvester Stallone but it was more than a decade ago and I don’t remember anything about it though, except that it wasn’t really good at all (the intro was awesome though). Well, first of all, I actually saw the original classic on the BBC and, to be honest, I have to admit that I did struggle with the dialogues (apparently, I was not the only one since this movie was re-dubbed for the US market as they thought the accent of some of the gangsters was just too heavy). Fortunately, the story turned out to be simple enough but it’s just too bad I couldn’t really follow what they were saying. Anyway, while watching this movie, I wondered if this movie might have been an inspiration for ‘John Wick’. Indeed, if you would replace all these super repetitive and rather boring actions scenes from ‘John Wick’ and replaced them with an actual story and some actual dialogues, I would probably enjoy more this franchise and I’m pretty sure it would be actually quite similar to this British classic. Anyway, there is no doubt that Caine was awesome as he delivered here one of his most iconic performances. Indeed, Carter was such a badass but also a really believable gangster. That was the other nice thing about this movie, how gritty, grim and realistic it all felt. Indeed, Mike Hodges went for a documentary-like approach and it made this movie quite fascinating to behold. And to think that it was his directorial debut made the whole thing even more impressive. To be honest, it was still missing something to become really amazing but a re-watch with some subtitles might help me to make up my mind about the damned thing. Anyway, to conclude, it is a really solid classic and it is definitely worth a look, especially if you like the genre.

7/10