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After the cult success and unconcealed excess of Scarface it's a wonder Hitchcock disciple, Brian De Palma, would want to cast his suspenseful eye on Hispanic gangsters once more a decade later. Surely the tribulations of Tony Montana couldn't be bettered? With Al Pacino's insistence however, the gifted director decided to bring Edwin Torres' novel After Hours (the film's name was changed to avoid confusion with Martin Scorsese's 1985 comedy thriller) to life. With Pacino as Carlito Brigante, a New Yorker with Puerto Rican heritage who is determined to go straight after a prison stint, Sean Penn as the protagonist's unctuous lawyer, a career-making turn from John Leguizamo, and even Luis Guzman and Viggo Mortensen appearing in supporting roles, Carlito's Way illustrates De Palma's evolution as a filmmaker. From Scarface's overindulgent take on the underbelly of the cocaine world to the stylised emotional tragedy of Carlito's Way, De Palma shows an advanced maturity in storytelling regardless of how he reaches that goal via pushing the envelope of violence and depravity in both films.
Indeed, Brigante is more mature than Montana. After the initial moments of the film in a courtroom scene where Kleinfeld (expertly played by an unrecognisable Penn) manages to have his client, Brigante, released from jail after only five years of a thirty-year stretch, Pacino eloquently paints him as being just as chauvinistic and witty as Montana but David Koepp's magnificent screenplay infuses a compassion into the former legend of the barrio with a new, ordinary ambition: to own a car rental business in the Bahamas - an aspiration hit home by the surprisingly welcome voiceover. Like Joe Pesci's stint as a narrator in Scorsese's Casino, Pacino's track could so easily have been a mammoth annoyance but it's a flawlessly executed device. Montana never underwent a prison boot camp to calm his character and one only has to recollect Pacino's performance as the cheeky Cuban from ten years previous to imagine what Brigante would be like if the law hadn't caught up with him. Nevertheless, De Palma includes a portrayal here of a hot-headed punk, Leguizamo's Benny Blanco from the Bronx, that indicates what our hero used to be. Carlito's Way is a piece focussing on redemption amidst struggle and the subject's past plays a major role in this resistance between earning enough money at a flashy nightclub to be an upstanding pillar of society or succumbing to the temptation of slipping back into previous habits as a criminal.
There are two scenes in particular which steal the show. The first is a violent, heavily choreographed shootout in a pool hall which De Palma spent weeks setting up perfectly. It would seem an unnecessary waste of effort for most directors but it builds the foundation for the audience - it's a welcome exercise in action before an hour of almost pure dialogue - and for the character of Carlito Brigante - immediately afterwards he begins to realise that a stray into unlawfulness could be the key to future success. The climactic set piece at Grand Central Station feels similar to Ronin's remarkable car chase sequence - both are fantastic scenes in two great films but are often overlooked by mainstream audiences because of numerous alternatives. The sheer volume of truly breathtaking vehicle chases in Bond films alone, for instance, makes it tough for others to even compare. Furthermore, direct competition for Carlito's Way's most famous railroad station mêlée comes from De Palma's own Untouchables and the outstanding pram waylay inside Chicago's Union Station. The auteur's 1987 Eliot Ness-Al Capone crime drama contains the more famous scene almost certainly due to the star power on show, but the culmination of this 1993 character study may even surpasses it for tension and excitement.
A romantic thread is also crammed into proceedings and, even though a prospective future as the patriarch of a family gives another incentive for Brigante to aim for as a straight man (excuse the pun), the chemistry between Pacino and Penelope Ann Miller is more stale than sparkling and unnecessarily distracts from the main arc of seeking salvation. In a sense, the aforementioned riveting action scenes are so enthralling that they outshine Brigante's quest to rekindle his relationship with Gail, a former lover who is a seedier dancer than her Broadway credentials promise. Even so, as the audience knows where Brigante ends up from the opening flashback, Carlito's Way is a film about the character's journey rather than his final destination and Gail is a segment of his expedition because of the humanity she adds to the piece.
The extras
"The Making of Carlito's Way" is a good documentary that covers every base and weighs in at just over 35 minutes. It touches upon how the film came to be, the shooting process, and takes the time to interview major players behind the production such as De Palma, Torres and producer Martin Bregman. Pacino and Penn would have obviously been welcome additions but the piece accomplishes what it sets out to do by offering interesting insight into how the mechanisms of film production work. A photo gallery and a theatrical trailer round off a fairly mediocre package.
The summary
Pacino, Penn and De Palma do their best to enchant and pass with flying colours. Carlito's Way is an absorbing study of the conflicting duality of uncomplicated yet troublesome normalness and the endeavour of an enhanced reality with captivating characters and masterful direction.
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