In the criminal milieu of 1972 New York City, 30 years is, more often than not, a high life expectancy. The pull of the underworld\u2014figuratively and, as staged by De Palma in the film\u2019s elegiac prologue and bravura climactic shootout, both set in and around the subway tunnels of New York\u2019s Grand Central Terminal, literally\u2014is simply too strong. Once you\u2019re in, there\u2019s no way out save prison or death.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On paper, the story of Carlito\u2019s Way<\/em>\u2014a Puerto Rican drug runner and assassin attempts to give up his life of crime, only to doom himself when he agrees to do one last job\u2014reads like a derivative version of any number of gangster stories, not least of all De Palma and Pacino\u2019s magnum opus of exactly 10 years prior, Scarface<\/em>. But in execution, the film has less in common with that genre than it does classic film noirs, specifically fatalistic morality tales like Kiss of Death<\/em> and Force of Evil<\/em>, in which morally-stricken criminals attempt to go straight, only to find the institutions, both legal and criminal, that surround them won\u2019t let them go.<\/p>\n\n\n\n De Palma explicitly approached the material as a noir, as he\u2019d initially been uninterested in making another gangster story\u2014especially a Spanish-speaking gangster story\u2014with Pacino after Scarface<\/em>. Although it stands as one of the most beloved and iconic of all American gangster films (behind only the first two Godfathers <\/em>and Goodfellas<\/em>) today, at the time of its release it didn\u2019t exactly light the world on fire. It did okay at the box office, but it wasn\u2019t quite a hit, and the reviews and controversy surrounding it\u2014particularly its mostly non-Cuban cast\u2019s depiction of Cubans\u2014caused stress for the filmmakers. In this light, De Palma\u2019s initial reticence towards Carlito\u2019s Way<\/em> is entirely understandable, although once he read David Keopp\u2019s script and saw the story for what it was, he was keen to come aboard. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The end result is amongst the director\u2019s most visually stunning works, which is saying a whole hell of a lot. From his signature steadicam long shots and swooping camera moves to the bold but moody color palette (Scarface<\/em>\u2019s sunbaked menace and eye-popping pastels are swapped out for nocturnal blues, blacks and reds) courtesy of cinematographer Stephen H. Burum and production designer Richard Sylbert, he really pulled out all the stops for this one. As he himself says in Noah Baumbach and Jake Paltrow\u2019s 2015 doc De Palma<\/em>, \u201cI can\u2019t make a better picture than this.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Even though many, including the man himself, would hold Carlito\u2019s Way<\/em> up as De Palma\u2019s best, it really was Pacino\u2019s baby. He first discovered the story in the early 70\u2019s while prepping for Serpico<\/em>. That\u2019s when he met Judge Edwin Torres, a Puerto Rican-American from New York who served on the state\u2019s Supreme Court and would use real-life stories as inspiration for the novels Carlito\u2019s Way<\/em> (1975) and After Hours<\/em> (1979). (Between them, he penned the 1977 book Q&A<\/em>, adapted into a 1990 bruiser by Sidney Lumet.) Upon reading the novels, Pacino spent years trying to bring them to screen. (Although both books are credited as source material for the movie, it\u2019s mostly an adaptation of the latter, taking the first novel\u2019s title to avoid confusion with Martin Scorsese\u2019s After Hours<\/em> of eight years earlier.) De Palma was actually the third choice for director, after attempts to make the film with John Mackenzie and Abel Ferrara fell through. (Per Ferrara during a recent post-Bad Lieutenant<\/em> screening: \u201cI was supposed to direct Carlito\u2019s Way<\/em> until they fucking fired me.\u201d)<\/p>\n\n\n\n And for as stunning a work of visual cinema as the film is, it is just as much an actor\u2019s showcase, with Pacino turning in one his most measured and soulful performances, even as he does go big when the occasion calls for it. (If there is one criticism that can be levied against Pacino\u2019s performance, it\u2019s that his Spanish accent, which is never that convincing to begin with, often slips into the weird Southern drawl he used in the previous year\u2019s Scent of a Woman<\/em>.) But it\u2019s Penn who steals the show, completely disappearing into a character whose nebbish looks and mannerisms can\u2019t quite mask the deep well of anger, violence and self-hatred boiling up inside of him. He\u2019s one of the most repulsive, unnerving, and yet oddly sympathetic characters in all of crime cinema, and Penn should have received his first Oscar for the role. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Penelope Ann Miller is very good as Gail, Carlito\u2019s wounded soulmate and moral conscience, and if she\u2019s not given as much to work with as, say, Michelle Pfieffer in Scarface<\/em>, she also never devolves into the clich\u00e9 of stripper with a heart of gold that a lesser movie would have made her into. The cast is rounded out by a murderer\u2019s row of New York faces and character actors, particularly Latino actors who would go on to successful careers, including John Leguizamo, Louis Guzman, John Ortiz, and, in a non-speaking role, John Seda. (Viggo Mortensen also has an early memorable role, and while he\u2019s very good in his one scene, he\u2019s even less convincing as Puerto Rican than Pacino.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Even as everything clicked into place to create a great film, De Palma set his expectations low for the reception. His instinct proved right: Carlito\u2019s Way<\/em> wasn\u2019t a bomb by any means, but neither was it a financial hit. The reviews were mostly middling, with the majority of critics charging it as being by-the-numbers, although a few, such as Roger Ebert<\/a>, recognized the mastery at work and gave it raves. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Interestingly, unlike the controversy that erupted within Cuban-American groups upon Scarface\u2019s <\/em>release, Carlito\u2019s Way <\/em>seems not to have brooked much, if any, public backlash from the Puerto Rican community, although Leguizamo has since gone on record<\/a> to express some lingering unease about the casting. This likely owes to the much more muted reception the film received as a whole, as well as the fact that it\u2019s not nearly as garish or violent a spectacle as its predecessor. (Also, it\u2019s just a fact of American life that Cuban-American political groups are much more fervent than other Latino coalitions.) Regardless, the film stands as one of the finest examples of (the much more complicated than many would have you believe) cinematic whitewashing and brownface<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Carlito\u2019s Way<\/em> remains the very definition of an underrated classic, which isn\u2019t to say it hasn\u2019t received its flowers. It was always too good not to be rediscovered and reconsidered. As with horror movies, any gangster movie of quality, no matter how underseen initially, will find its audience, and while Carlito\u2019s Way <\/em>doesn\u2019t enjoy the cultural ubiquity of Scarface<\/em>\u2014a good thing, given how reductive and shallow that tends to be\u2014it proved popular enough to spawn a 2005 prequel (albeit, direct-to-video), Carlito\u2019s Way: Rise to Power<\/em> (an adaptation of Torres\u2019s first novel) and, like Scarface<\/em>, references to it continually pop up in music<\/a>, video games<\/a>, and other pieces of pop culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But regardless of whatever footprint Carlito\u2019s Way<\/em> has left behind, it will continue to be discovered by new viewers simply because it\u2019s the work of a master operating at his highest level. That was true 30 years ago, it\u2019s true today, and it will be true 30 years hence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Carlito’s Way” is available for digital rental or purchase<\/a>, and is out in a new 4K UHD set from Arrow Video<\/a>. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/11\/carlito2-1024x678.jpg\")
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