Movie Title: Carlito's Way
Genre: Crime, Drama, Thriller
Starring: Al Pacino, Sean Penn, Penelope Ann Miller, John Leguizamo, Luis Guzmán, James Rebhorn, Viggo Mortensen, Ingrid Rogers, Adrian Pasdar, Jorge Porcel, John Ortiz
Review: Ex-con Carlito Brigante (Al Pacino) gets released from prison and is looking to turn over a new leaf and go straight. But the more Carlito resists his old life of crime he can't help but get dragged back into a world of money, drugs, and violence.
Brian De Palma and Al Pacino know how to make a movie - Scarface anyone? It's a shame that lightning didn't strike twice for the pair with Carlito's Way. Now, that's not to say that Carlito's Way is not entertaining, it's just that it doesn't really have anything new or interesting to say. It almost seems like a bland remake of a '40s gangster movie with James Cagney or Edward G. Robinson.
Al Pacino is great and has a character with an interesting dilemma, but instead of making it a focused character study or drama it wants to be a crime thriller, a melodrama, a love story, a gangster picture - it wants to be too many different movies, which is fine, but what's happening isn't very interesting and don't blend together very well. It's like a greatest hits kind of a movie that covers the hits and doesn't contain the actual ones, if that makes any sense. Sean Penn's Larry Fine haircut is the most interesting thing in the movie, and even that couldn't keep my attention over the bloated 2 hour and 24 minute runtime.
I know, much like Scarface, Carlito's Way does have it's die hard fans, but I am not one of them. I'm glad I saw it, but I would never sit through it again.
Fun Fact: According to Brian De Palma, Sean Penn demanded 30 takes of the shot of Kleinfeld asking Carlito to help him with Tony T's escape. When De Palma wanted to move on to the next shot, Penn screamed at De Palma. He continued to yell at De Palma on the ride back to New York City. He later called De Palma on the phone to continue yelling at him. De Palma said that was the only argument they had on the film.