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All Movie Info
Starring:
Al Pacino, Sean Penn, Penelope Ann Miller, Luis Guzmán, John Leguizamo, Ingrid Rogers, James Rebhorn, Viggo Mortensen, Jorge Porcel, Joseph Siravo, Adrian Pasdar
Directed By:
Brian DePalma
Written By:
David Koepp
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Carlito's Way (1993)
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Movie Review by Jarrod 
January 29th, 2008
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Favorite Movie Quote: "Favor gonna kill you faster than a bullet."
'Carlito's Way' serves as a nice contrast to Scarface, in the sense that its main character, Carlito Brigante (Pacino) is a reformed gangster, fresh out of jail and determined not to go back. He wants to raise enough money so that he can invest in a rental car business in the Bahamas. However, his past keeps catching up with him, and he keeps making bad decisions, and meeting precisely the very people he should avoid. One of these is his lawyer Kleinfeld (Sean Penn), a cocaine addict who has gotten himself into serious trouble with an Italian mob boss, stuck in Riker's Island prison barge. He tells Kleinfeld to help bust him out, or else he sends some goons to take care of him. Kleinfeld turns to Carlito for assistance. Carlito is still bound by a sense of loyalty to his friends, and Kleinfeld handled his appeal, so he cannot turn him down. Carlito takes a job at a nightclub, and it is there he encounters Benny Blanco (John Leguizamo), who is much like a younger version of himself, a hotheaded drug dealer. Carlito hooks up with an old girlfriend named Gail (Penelope Ann Miller), a dancer who tells him she performs on Broadway, but neglects to mention she is a stripper. Their relationship is never explored that fully, Gail tries to dissuade Carlito from going along with Kleinfeld, but he doesn't listen to her, and she gets angry, and he ends up being pursued by the mafia hitmen who eventually discover that he and Kleinfeld were associates. Carlito pleads with Gail to accompany him to the Bahamas.
There are problems with Pachanga (Luis Guzman), who is desperate for a larger salary than Carlito seems willing to provide. That Gail gets pregnant is more or less a plot contrivance, Carlito of course wishes for his child to be a better man (or woman) than he. That he will die seems inevitable, but De Palma and screenwriter David Koepp surprise us in this regard. Carlito, in a particularly exciting and well-crafted sequence, runs from the hitmen, as they chase him through a subway station, and there are several creative things he does to elude them, a narrow escape foiled by an unlikely source, the fat guy who is always out of breath and has to stop and rest every few minutes. He spots Carlito and alerts his buddies, and there is a bloody shoot-out. All of this is vintage De Palma.
Pacino plays Carlito as a smart and sympathetic character, with a not-so-great Puerto Rican accent that occasionally weaves its way into his voice. But this is one of Pacino's better performances, and he avoids a lot of the operatic tendencies he displayed as Tony Montana, never overdoing it, and maintaining just the right tone from beginning to end. If Montana were older and wiser, you would have Carlito. Sean Penn is extraordinary, as the obnoxious and unstable Kleinfeld, and yes it is initially difficult to recognize him under those glasses and that head of curly hair. We know this is a person who can never be trusted, a sneaky, underhanded, two-bit crook consumed by greed, yet Carlito only realizes this once it is far too late.
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 | Tim
Jan 29, 2008 8:39 PM
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| One of my favorites.....the prequel was horrible but this one is a classic. |
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