I like both movies but prefer the Michael Caine version. Caine plays Carter as a cold-blooded, psychopathic sadist and killer who has no scruples about anything or anyone, except (maybe) his daughter (he cries when he sees her in the porn video and gives her a few quid near the end of the movie). He intimidates with intensity more than with physicality. He treats his friends as badly as he treats his enemies. He's having an affair with his boss' wife. He has no sympathy for his own informant who ends up hospitalized after a severe beating by his enemies. He stabs a man to death with no more compunction that swatting a fly. He seeks out his brother's killer, not because he loved his brother, but because, when his brother is killed, he sees the murder as a challenge to his own standing as the roughest, toughest bad guy in Newcastle. He has to reclaim his old turf. And he doesn't mind a little "unnecessary roughness" along the way. He is thoroughly unlikable and has no redeeming qualities, yet Caine makes you almost like him and root for him anyway. He's not someone you'd want to sit down and have a beer with unless you were suicidal. This movie leaves you shaken at the end.
Stallone's version is more of a tough guy with a heart. He's a debt collector who uses unorthodox methods such as broken limbs and punches to vital organs rather than a shark-like killing machine like Caine. He doesn't enjoy violence for the sake of violence as does Caine's Carter. You could have a beer with him and not end up with your throat slit by a shard from your own beer glass.
So who's tougher, Caine's Carter or Stallone's Carter? Let me answer that with another question. Who kills Stallone's Carter at the end of the movie? Coincidence? I don't think so.
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