GET CARTER director Mike Hodges arrived at Tyneside Cinema to kick off the first of a series of his iconic films.

I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead, released in 2004 and starring Clive Owen, was introduced to a capacity crowd on Thursday night as part of the Carter is 40 celebration at the cinema.

Expressing his immense delight to be back in Newcastle, Hodges also thanked the cinema’s appreciation of his body of work. He said: “I am very grateful to Tyneside Cinema for putting on these screenings.

“I am especially thankful to them for showing some of my other films because, with a film like Get Carter, you can’t help but feel something of a one-trick-pony at times.”

The veteran director gave a brief insider’s look into I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead, an often overlooked gritty film noir. Reuniting with Clive Owen, with whom he’d worked on Croupier (1998), it shares the similar theme of familial revenge as Get Carter.

Owen plays Will Graham, a retired gangster who is dragged back into the violent crime world after the suicide of his younger brother Davy, played by Jonathan Rhys-Meyer.

After an autopsy reveals Davy had been raped, Will sets out on a solo mission to punish those responsible.

Hodges said: “Most of my life I have spent focusing on very interesting human beings and this film is certainly no different. When this movie came out most of the public and critics just did not get it.

“I hope you find something in this film which the critics did not.”

The audience responded with rapturous applause, a gesture of their appreciation of a legend in the world of cinema.

And Hodges indicated that we may be soon seeing his return to cinema.

He said: “I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead remains the last film I did. But I hope it won’t be my last.”

Richard Gribbin