The utterly useless remake of a classic crime thriller trashed by critics, ignored by audiences, but defended by its star settles a score on Netflix

He might have cultivated a reputation for being the single most sequel-happy star in Hollywood not named Vin Diesel, but Sylvester Stallone has rarely dabbled in the arena of the remake. When he did, though, 2000’s Get Carter was an unmitigated failure on every level.

The 1971 original is one of the greatest crime thrillers of its decade, and there’s a lot of people out there who’d rank it among the finest of all-time, so it was hardly crying out for an Americanized reinvention to begin with. Funnily enough, once the dismal dud hit theaters, the reasons why explained themselves very clearly.

Cratering at the box office after earning less than $20 million on a reported $63 million budget, Get Carter V2.0 also suffered the unwanted ignominy of netting an 11 percent critical approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, a 28 percent audience average from upwards of 25,000 votes, and a pair of Razzie nominations for Worst Actor and Worst Remake or Sequel, all of which was fully deserved.

Stallone didn’t understand the backlash, reflecting in the aftermath that he thought Get Carter was “really underrated,” even if he did admit that he “learned the hard way that remakes, quite often they’re not done as well.” Either way, Netflix subscribers will be falling on one side of the fence or the other, with FlixPatrol outing the completely, utterly, and abjectly useless do-over as one of the most-watched titles on the global content library, and a Top 10 hit in the United Kingdom to boot.