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[Highly rated reviewer]

Pure Caine!!

Jack Carters brother is dead. Jack travels to Newcastle from London for his funeral, but somethings not quite right. Jack doesn't believe that his brothers death was an accident and begins trying to uncover the true circumstances surrounding it. Jack will stop at nothing and seeks a brutal revenge on those resposible. Perfect casting and top quality acting and plot. Many memorable scenes. Perfect film for any occassion. 'You couldn't win an egg and spoon race, Eric.'

Ambivalence really...

Mmmm...saw it years ago, but 33 years later it seems antique and rather frozen in time. Filmically, a historical curiosity...very much of its era with edgy sparse camera work (you can practically taste Tyneside), an air of restrained violence which sits awkwardly with the spirit of the fun loving sixties that had just finished and a tremendous, simple, haunting score that stays with you.

Caine is excellent, a restrained volcano, but some of the others are pantomime villains, wooden as hell (check the actress who plays Caine's murdered brothers girlfriend). And the script - if you actually listen to it - is mostly terrible, with one dimensional characters mouthing cartoon dialogue.

In addition, its violence is vicious and blunt, for some this gives it it's power. For me, I just felt weary and remembered with a slight yawn the end of censorship in the sixties and how directors then and in the early seventies were endlessly, and sometimes meaninglessly, trying to 'push boundaries'('Straw Dogs' came to mind.) Maybe I'm just getting old.

Is it a classic? Well...I guess the appearance of a youthful Alf Roberts (Coronation St) as a Geordie businessman who Michael Caine throws off the roof of a multi storey car park might make it so! Ultimately for me, a couple of hours of intense, glowering 'mood'...a film to feel more than watch and dissect.