"You're a Big Man, but You're in Bad Shape"

"This morning, then, the actual plot–gangster loses brother, comes back to his native city to investigate and avenge, kills at will, and then meets his own awful end–is less important than the film's bigger picture, and what it said about both Newcastle and Britain as a whole. As we drive from location to location, out it all comes: the north-south divide, the post-industrial condition, and the great mulch of corruption and quiet criminality that sat under so much of a national culture whose in-built instinct was always to look the other way."

John Harris in The Guardian marks the fortieth anniversary of Get Carter.