An elegiac gangland revenge drama shot in an almost verité style and steeped in the local flavor of disheartened blue-collar Newcastle, 1970's Get Carter has become a touchstone of modern British cinema. That its director, Mike Hodges, managed a comeback with the similarly gritty Croupier three decades later comes as only a slight surprise: He seems far more suited to the subterranean criminal world than the outer-space reaches of Flash Gordon. Similarly, Get Carter benefits not a whit from the expansion of this Hollywood remake. Using washed-out film stock, a muted color scheme, and a perpetually overcast Seattle setting, Last Time I Committed Suicide director Stephen Kay attempts some of the same effects as the original, but also feels compelled to graft them onto wisecracks, car chases, catchphrases, excessively stylized editing, and other exhausted American action-film clichés with some New Wave jump cuts thrown in for good measure. The new doesn't fit comfortably with the old, and its star doesn't fit at all. This time out, Carter has been reborn as goateed Las Vegas tough guy Sylvester Stallone, whose ever-apparent discomfort in a variety of expensive suits does little to capture the enormous sadness Michael Caine conveyed in the original. (Which is odd, because his performance in the underrated Cop Land did.) After his brother dies under mysterious circumstances, Stallone hops a train for Seattle, equipped with a bag full of weapons and an inquiring mind. There, he finds the family he's neglected in the form of sister-in-law Miranda Richardson and niece Rachael Leigh Cook and low-lifers he'd happily left behind, including Mickey Rourke as a pornographer with connections to computer billionaire Alan Cumming. Caine is on hand, as well, as a genial underworld figure. "Revenge doesn't work," his character says at one point, as if stepping out of the original for a moment. Stallone doesn't heed him and neither does Get Carter, which ultimately ends up reveling in the sadism its source subverted, though what appears to be a hastily re-shot final scene might have something to do with that. Kay, almost by accident, stumbles across some memorable moments here and there, but he finds nothing that the original didn't do far better with half the bluster and twice the lead performance.