A film and television fixture for decades, Michael Caine
is one of Hollywood’s best and brightest (he’s earned an Oscar
nomination at least once a decade since the 1960s), with an incredible
list of credits as a leading man and a supporting player — and even a
few minor roles, like his brief appearance in 2006’s
Children of Men.
As if that wasn’t impressive enough, Caine’s also a published author, a
chillout DJ, and a knight of the Order of the British Empire — and now,
thanks to the debut of his latest film,
Youth,
he can add “subject of a Rotten Tomatoes Total Recall” to his list of
accomplishments. Let’s take a look at Michael Caine’s definitive roles!
Zulu (1964) 93%
Caine scored his first starring role in this Cy Endfield production,
which told the story of the Battle of Rorke’s Drift during the late 19th
century Anglo-Zulu War. The culmination of a long and bitter border
dispute, the war ultimately added another bloody chapter to British
colonialism in the region, but not without months of the kind of
struggle dramatized in
Zulu — and the efforts of soldiers like
lieutenants John Chard (played by Stanley Baker, who also produced) and
Gonville Bromhead (played by Caine), who threw together a makeshift fort
to make a desperate stand against the opposition. Though barely a
footnote in American history books, Rorke’s Drift produced a number of
decorated veterans for the British Army — and an early critical triumph
for its freshly minted star. “Caine was just splendid,” applauded Dennis
Schwartz of Ozus’ World Movie Reviews. “It is still one of his finest
hours in film.”
Watch Trailer
The Ipcress File (1965) 100%
Caine made his first — and, critically speaking, his best —
appearance as Len Deighton’s rumpled spy Harry Palmer in this 1965
thriller, which gave fans of cinematic espionage a slightly more
realistic alternative to James Bond. Emphasis on the
slightly:
Although Harry had to contend with more bureaucratic red tape (and got
to play with fewer gadgets) than 007, his adventures still included a
few of the fanciful elements that make a good spy yarn, like
The Ipcress File‘s
high-tech tape recordings and brainwashing baddies. Caine went on to
play Palmer in two sequels and a pair of made-for-TV movies, but
Ipcress was the one that helped him break out as a leading man: As Angie Errigo of Empire noted, “Caine,
Zulu under his belt and
Alfie
ahead, is the cheeky working class but aspirational bright spark hero
par excellence, captured at the exact moment he became a star.”
Watch Trailer
Alfie (1966) 100%
The quintessential swinging ’60s film,
Alfie is undeniably a product of its time, and it can admittedly be hard to watch it in 2015 without thinking of
Austin Powers
or wincing at the dated lingo and/or fashions. But this adaptation of
the Bill Naughton novel remains a classic for many reasons, chief among
them Michael Caine’s impressively nuanced, Oscar-nominated performance
in the title role. Alfie Elkins is a cad, plain and simple, but Caine
made audiences root for him anyway by giving them glimpses of his
humanity — and not only in the few scenes where he was called upon to
show some real emotion, but throughout the entire film, as he slowly,
subtly took the character on a journey from callow bachelor to… well,
less
callow bachelor. As Dan Lybarger put it in his review for Nitrate
Online, “Caine’s terrific performance makes a viewer almost forget that
the film is actually a condemnation of its character’s swinging
lifestyle.”
Watch Trailer
Get Carter (1971) 89%
A stark, unflinching portrait of the lingering stain that violence can leave on a person’s life — even after they’re dead —
Get Carter
repulsed many critics when it was released, but behind all that ugly
violence lurks a film whose sharp script, strong performances, and
surprisingly thoughtful themes are impossible to ignore. The critics
eventually came around, too; over time,
Carter has come to be
regarded as one of the best gangster movies ever made — and even one of
Britain’s best films overall. In another actor’s hands, the role of the
vengeful Jack Carter would have been a thuggish cartoon, but Caine
infused his character’s homicidal rampage with palpable pain and sorrow.
(For an example of how it could have gone wrong, watch Sylvester
Stallone’s 2000 remake, which featured Caine in a supporting role. Or
better yet, don’t.) He’d earned praise for earlier roles, but Caine
really started coming into his own here; as Roger Ebert noted in his
review, “Caine has been mucking about in a series of potboilers,
undermining his acting reputation along the way, but
Get Carter shows him as sure, fine and vicious — a good hero for an action movie.”
Sleuth (1972) 96%
Caine went toe to toe with Laurence Olivier in this adaptation of the Anthony Shaffer play, directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz (
All About Eve).
A seriously impressive pedigree, and it paid off on the screen: Caine
and Olivier were the only credited actors in the movie, and
Sleuth earned them both Best Actor nominations — something that had, to that point, happened only once before (the first?
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf). As with a lot of stage adaptations,
Sleuth
is extremely dialogue-heavy, but with actors this talented, that helps;
over the course of its two hours-plus running time, the complicated
rivalry between nobleman Andrew Wyke (Olivier) and struggling
businessman Milo Tindle (Caine) deepens with every line. It’s such a
rich story, Caine actually took Olivier’s role for Kenneth Branagh’s
2007 remake, starring opposite Jude Law. “It’s one of those works built
around a gimmick that in fact requires a little cheating on the part of
the filmmakers in order to succeed,” wrote Ken Hanke of the Asheville
Mountain Xpress. “But it’s a good gimmick.”
Watch Trailer
The Man Who Would Be King (1975) 96%
John Huston waited more than 20 years to finish this adaptation of
Rudyard Kipling’s short story about a pair of adventurers and their
exploits in a remote Afghan village, trying to cast a succession of
rugged duos (from Bogey and Clark Gable to Robert Redford and Paul
Newman) before finally finding his leading men in Caine and Sean
Connery. Blending anti-imperialist themes with swashbuckling escapism,
The Man Who Would Be King
charts the rise and fall of Peachy Carnehan (Caine) and Danny Dravot
(Connery) as they dupe an Afghan village into thinking they’re gods,
only to find that the natives aren’t quite as credulous as they seem. It
was, in short, a slice of good old-fashioned adventure during a time
when it had fallen out of favor — making
King, in the words of Cole Smithey, “A must for every 10-year-old boy.”
Watch Trailer
Hannah and Her Sisters (1986) 93%
Woody Allen lined up one of his strongest ensemble casts for the seven-time Academy Award nominee
Hannah and Her Sisters,
starring Caine as Elliot, the restless husband of Hannah (Mia Farrow)
whose dissatisfaction with his marriage leads him into an entanglement
with — you guessed it — Hannah’s sister (Barbara Hershey). It’s the kind
of story Allen tells best, and
Hannah is one of his strongest —
and most successful — films, ultimately winning a Best Writing Oscar to
go with its healthy $40 million gross. “No matter how passive a viewer
you are, how much you attempt to dismiss it or judge its characters,”
wrote Steven Snyder for Zertinet Movies, “Woody Allen reaches past those
sleepy, cynical, or questioning eyes and makes you think as much as any
film I’ve seen.”
Watch Trailer
Mona Lisa (1986) 97%
Writer/director Neil Jordan scored one of his earliest critical hits with 1986’s
Mona Lisa,
starring Bob Hoskins as George, an ex-con who is manipulated by his
former boss, a gangster named Mortwell (Caine), into a relationship with
a prostitute (Cicely Tyson) so Mortwell can take advantage of her
“professional” connection to a rival. Caine is in singularly sleazy form
here, but it was Hoskins, in a rare starring role, who walked away with
a pile of trophies, including a Golden Globe, a BAFTA Award, and an
Oscar nomination. Part love story, part grisly mobster drama,
Mona Lisa
didn’t make a ton of money at the box office, but it did earn the
admiration of critics like ReelViews’ James Berardinelli, who wrote, “In
an era when movies about love almost always invariably devolve into
formulaic affairs, Neil Jordan’s
Mona Lisa stands out as an often-surprising, multi-layered achievement.”
Watch Trailer
The Quiet American (2003) 87%
The first time Hollywood took a crack at adapting Graham Greene’s
bestselling novel, the result was a bowdlerized version that, much to
his chagrin, stripped out the author’s distaste with American
involvement in Vietnam. More than 40 years later, director Phillip Noyce
filmed a much more faithful adaptation, starring Brendan Fraser as an
idealistic CIA operative in 1950s Vietnam, Michael Caine as the jaded
British journalist who crosses his path, and Do Thi Hai Yen as the woman
who comes between them. What Noyce’s version lost in timeliness, it
more than made up in script and cast — most notably Caine, who earned a
Best Actor Academy Award nomination for his work and was singled out in
reviews from critics such as Eleanor Ringel Gillespie of the Atlanta
Journal-Constitution. “Caine, who also starred in one other Greene
adaptation, 1983’s
The Honorary Consul, is the essence of
almost all the author’s misfits, ” wrote Gillespie, summing him up as “a
practiced cynic masking an aching romantic.”
Watch Trailer
The Dark Knight Trilogy
Bruce Wayne might be an unimaginably wealthy businessman who lives a
double life as the crime-purging vigilante Batman, but he wouldn’t be
able to get much done without the dependable service of his
long-suffering butler, Alfred Pennyworth — and when Christopher Nolan
took over the franchise with 2005’s
Batman Begins, he turned to
Caine to embody the character with his unique ability to project an
aura of good breeding, street smarts, and a quick, understated wit.
Though not one of Caine’s larger roles, Alfred is an integral part of
the Batman mythos, and his part in the franchise placed him alongside
talented actors such as Christian Bale, Morgan Freeman, and Heath Ledger
— whose bravura performance as the Joker in
The Dark Knight was
a crucial element in the positive reviews the movie earned from critics
like Manohla Dargis of the New York Times, who wrote, “Pitched at the
divide between art and industry, poetry and entertainment,
The Dark Knight goes darker and deeper than any Hollywood movie of its comic-book kind.”
