Carlito’s Way - Trying to Outrun Fate

Aug

30

Carlito’s Way - Trying to Outrun Fate

≡ Category: Comedy, Drama, Highly Recommended, Movie Reviews By Country, United States |
≅ Written by: Michael Kydonieus

Country: United States
Genre: Drama
Director: Brian De Palma
Year: 2003

Rating:

TRASH CINEMA HIGHLY RECOMMENDED MOVIE

No one can say that Brian De Palma doesn’t warn us. Carlito’s Way opens with the title character getting shot in slow motion while mournful strings serenade us. It’s a measure of how successful the movie is that when this event reappears, it’s a shock and it hurts.

As the story opens, legendary heroin dealer Carlito Brigante (Al Pacino) is just getting out of prison. He wants to go straight and retire to the islands with his W.A.S.P girlfriend Gail (Penelope Ann Miller), but it ain’t gonna be easy, not with his cronies trying to rip him off, the younger generation gunning for him, district attorney Norwalk (James Rebhorn) wiretapping him, and his lawyer David Kleinfeld (Sean Penn) trying to involve Carlito in his hairbrained schemes. It’s funny. Back before he was in the slammer, Carlito was a bigtime smack dealer, but somehow, you wind up feeling sorry for him. The poor bastard can’t seem to catch a break.

Al Pacino is not much more convincing as a Newyorican gangster than he was as a Cuban coke kingpin in Scarface, but the somewhat cartoonish style of director Brian De Palma accomodates Pacino’s broad comic take on Carlito Brigante. A lot of the credit for the success of the Carlito character has to be laid at the feet of Edwin Torres, who contributed much of the tasty dialog, and screenwriter David Koepp, for not screwing it up.

Sean Penn, however, completely nails the role of David Kleinfeld, Carlito’s slimy lawyer. Other than his work in Oliver Stone’s U-Turn, it was Penn’s last great role. This is all the more impressive when you consider that Sean Penn took the role purely for the money, to finance his film The Crossing Guard. David Kleinfeld is completely unlike any character than Sean Penn has ever played. Penn came up with the look, utterly specific body language and speech patterns, and displays incredible comic chops, the equal of his signature role as stoned surfer Jeff Spicolli in Fast Times At Ridgemont High.

In a movie about Latino gangsters, you might be wondering, how’s the action? Well, there’s not a whole lot, really, but what there is is pretty choice. There’s two action setpieces, one towards the beginning of the film, one at the end, but they’re both set up beautifully by director Brian De Palma.

The first one is classic, with a lot of suspense and a great sense of layout. You know where the danger is coming from and you know that Carlito knows, too. And the question is, what’s he going to do about it?

The second action setpiece is just as fun, but it’s grander, more along the lines of De Palma’s train station climax from The Untouchables or the three dimensional chess climax from Raising Cain. It’s artificial as hell, an almost architectural, Rube Goldbergian action mousetrap.

But between these two action setpieces is a lot of plot, and here is where screenwriter David Koepp really earns his pay. Good ole Carlito is just trying to get along, run a club, and make some money so he can split New York and live to a ripe old age. Not much of a story there. But Koepp takes Edwin Torres’ novel and organizes the material beautifully, so the different story strands wind tighter and tighter around Carlito, threatening to strangle him. Through no fault of his own, Carlito gets into deeper and deeper doodoo, dodging one bullet after another. By halfway through the movie, Koepp has got us rooting for this guy, more so than Pacino, with his cockamamie Puerto Rican accent.

In the end, Carlito’s Way turns out to be an extremely entertaining picture, with no dead spots. It may not be art, but it sure is fun.