DVD Review: Carlito's Way

By Brisa Jul 9, 2004, 0:29 GMT

Al Pacino as Carlito Brigante

Carlito Brigante (Al Pacino) was facing a term of 30 year in prison, thanks to his lawyer and friend David Kleinfeld (Sean Penn) he gets out after only five years. Carlito’s time in prison makes him think about his life and the way he lived before. Sick and tired of hiding, killing and dealing, he takes a different perspective and tries to put his life back together.

Carlito goes back to his old neighborhood, it is definitely not the same, young people are taking over the drug deal business and everything he knew is not longer the same, the war in the street has grow cruel and the heroin is being replaced by cocaine. Carlito doesn’t care about that anymore; all he wants is to earn money legally so he can go to the Bahamas to run a rental car business.

David Kleinfeld offers him to run a club, Carlito accepts. Obviously that enviroment has a lot to do with his old life, drugs, whores, dealers, but he keeps his distance, he’s only trying to work. Everybody recognizes him, he was a legend, one of the most important drug dealers, almost the king of heroin. The more he tries to hide, the easier is for him to run into “old friends”.

One day at the club a guy called Benny Blanco refuses to pay the check, claiming that the owner of the club owe him money, therefore, he doesn’t have to pay. Carlito talks to him, Benny recognizes Carlito and tries to be polite by inviting him to a glass of champagne, Carlito turns down the offer. Benny Blanco from the Bronx is not happy man.

Brigante and Kleinfeld

He decides to help him anyway, somehow he feels a debt to Kleinfeld. Carlito risks everything he’s been working for, just because he’s his “brother”. As the story develops Carlito finds out that the old rules are obsolete, there’s no such thing as a “friendship code” and the new rule is “save your own ass”.

It doesn’t matter how many times somebody talks about Al Pacino, he’s just great, a legend, like Carlito Brigante. In this particular film Brian De Palma allows us to get to know an amazing character, one we can fall in love with.

I had to review this DVD, I just had to. I felt so moved by the story and especially by Carlito and his struggle, how bad he wanted to be a normal, upstanding citizen, but how hard it was to be away from the “barrio”. It was pleasant to me to be able to see Pacino in this kind of role, I’m drawn to this kind of characters, mostly because they’re souless, but Carlito “ain’t nothing like that”, a former dealer with a soul, I had to see that.

To me, the performance by Pacino was more than amazing, he was Carlito, in all his glory and all his misfortune, every single detail, from the look to the demeanor, from the accent to the slang, it was all great. It’s a delight to watch this actor, no matter what role he plays (well, maybe except for that role in the movie “Simone”, what was he thinking???), but anyway, Pacino has this energetic presence and that’s always good to watch.

Sean Penn’s character, David Kleinfeld, the greedy, gangster-wannabe, drug addict and dumb ass lawyer is portrayed pretty well by Penn. One of the things that caught my attention, besides the stupidity of the character, is the hair, a little lame for me to say that, but it’s true, the hair defined Kleinfeld, absolutely. “Adios Counselor".

Gail and Carlito

Talking about the rest of the cast, it was a nice ensemble, lots of Latin actors, nice work by mostly all of them. There are three roles who are really worth to watch, one if them is “Saso” played by an Argentinean man called Jorge Porcel. The particularity of this man is that he doesn’t speak a word of English and still, he nailed the character. Viggo Mortensen makes an appearance in the film, pretty good one I must say, he’s a miserable ex-convict trying to drag Carlito into the business. John Leguizamo as Benny Blanco from the Bronx, a younger version of Carlito Brigante.

I also liked the narration of the film, Carlito telling his own story. The voice off is a risky resource, because it doesn’t work in all cases, but in this particular one, considering the nature and the origin of the story, it worked perfectly.

"Bad move, Carlito"

Let’s talk about the DVD. The picture is exquisitely handled in this format; it has a really nice production. It offers three spoken languages, two of them, English and French in Dolby Digital 5.1. Spanish only in 2.0 Mono, it’s a shame the Spanish-speaking community can’t enjoy the same quality as the others.

The Bonus Material consists of: ‘The Making of Carlito’s Way’ in which Edwin Torres talks about the making of the character. It has also interviews with producer Martin Bregman, screen writer David Koepp and director Brian De Palma. The story behind the scenes is very interesting, especially knowing that there’s such a great team working for the film.

The photo gallery presents a bunch of movie stills and posters and the recommendations introduce three movies of the same genre, one of the starred and produced by John Leguizamo.

This is a great piece of work, it shouldn’t be missed in your “Mobster Collection”.