Empire Magazine Greatest Movies List

Empire Magazine Greatest Movies List - #278: Carlito's Way

Throughout his career Al Pacino has played many criminals, but as he aged so did the gangsters. In 1983 he played the demented Tony Montana in Brian de Palma’s Scarface, setting the bar for ambitious drug lords the world over. Ten years later Pacino and De Palma reunited for Carlito’s Way, which asked the question: what if Montana got caught, sent to prison, released back into society, and then tried to be a good boy? Well as Pacino said in The Godfather Part III: “Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in.”

The movie came out in 1993 when I was seven years old so of course this is not a movie I saw on the big screen. Too bad, because it is filled with De Palma’s visual flair, specifically in a climactic shootout at a train station. Fortunately I eventually caught up with it about 15 years later when it was playing on the Movie Network, which is always a great help if you want to catch up on classics during a long weekend. Chronologically it worked out great since I had already seen The Godfather trilogy and Scarface. Carlito’s Way is the natural progression for these characters.

The movie opens in 1975 as criminal Carlito Brigante (Pacino) is bragging to a New York City court how he has been rehabilitated and is now a changed man. The judge assumes Carlito is simply spitting in the court’s face because one way or another he is walking out of a 30-year prison sentence after his lawyer David Kleinfeld (Sean Penn) has exploited a legal technicality. Yet to the surprise of his criminal friends, Carlito really does try to leave his life of crime behind him. He does end up taking part in a drug deal that goes bad as a favour to his cousin, however he uses the money from the deal to buy a nightclub and become a legitimate businessman.

Next on his list is rekindling the romance with his girlfriend Gail (Penelope Ann Miller), a ballet dancer. Much to his surprise, Gail also makes money on the side by dancing at a strip club. How is he supposed to react when two excited patrons come to her table and congratulate her on her dancing when he is sitting right next to her? The old Carlito would probably have beaten them senseless in an alley in a fit of jealousy, yet here again he shows he has changed by demonstrating restraint. No matter their past or present life career choices, Carlito’s dream is to make money the hard way and run away with Gail down south.

Unfortunately Carlito may have changed but the world hasn’t. The district attorney (James Rebhorn) is looking for any excuse to throw him back in prison while at the club young gangster and big fan Benny Blanco (John Leguizamo) keeps harassing him for a business deal. The threat he never expected comes from his lawyer Kleinfeld who has been busy while Carlito was in prison. Not content with just being paid to be a mob lawyer, Kleinfeld thought it would a good idea to steal money from one of his mob-boss client. When the mob finds out, instead of being killed he must break the client out of prison and for this he begs for Carlito for help. Even though he is disgusted by Kleinfeld’s life choices Carlito accepts out of a sense of loyalty to his old friend. You know what they say about good deeds going unpunished.

If anybody can stand toe-to-toe with Al Pacino playing a gangster, it has to be Sean Penn playing his lawyer. In fact, Penn just about steals the show as the high-strung Kleinfeld. With his glasses, receding hairline and curly hairdo, he is nearly unrecognizable. While Carlito is trying to make his way out of the criminal underworld, Kleinfeld just keeps sinking in deeper and deeper while getting high on the products his clients sell. When criminals can’t rely on their lawyers to keep it together it is time to leave town.

Although not as successful as Scarface, this second collaboration between Pacino and De Palma is just as engrossing. The character of Carlito is much more sympathetic than Tony Montana even though he most likely deserved to be in prison for another 25 years. But as you watch him rekindle his love with Gail and try to walk the line you end up rooting for him and hoping he actually makes it to the tropics. He may not have inspired rappers and gangsters, but Carlito is another shining addition on Pacino’s long list of memorable characters.

Empire Magazine (2008) Greatest Movies List - #147: Notorious

Alfred Hitchcock’s Notorious (1946) has many of the master director’s signature elements: spies, lies, a handsome leading man, a domineering mother, and of course a MacGuffin. As it is set after World War II the villains are logically former Nazis, but the plot is so tense in many scenes that it remains an effective thriller to this day. It also bears a huge influence on John Woo’s Mission Impossible 2 , which retains plot elements and similar dialogue, but of course has more explosions than all of Hitchcock’s films put together. Notorious is so well-made it can be studies in film classes, which is exactly what I did while taking a course on Hollywood Cinema 1930-1960 during the summer of 2009 at the University of British Columbia. As this is Hitchcock we are talking about here, there are subtler things to analyze than explosions in Notorious , no offense to the skills of Mr. John Woo. Famously there is a kissing scene between stars Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman that seemingly las...

Empire Magazine (2008) Greatest Movies List - #91: Return of the Jedi

If you want someone to give you death stares, tell a die-hard Star Wars fan the original trilogy is not perfect. I am however going to take a risk and write that if there is one major flaw with Return of the Jedi (1983) is a lack of imagination when it comes to the central plot. After the good guys blow up the Death Star in the first movie, the bad guys are almost done building a brand new one, which of course needs to be destroyed again in more or less the same way. Richard Marquand may be directing this time, but it was still George Lucas writing. Plot hole aside, as a kid you can’t help but have fun as the good guys join forces with a tribe of living teddy bears to get the job done. Like many people in their early 30s, I was introduced to the first Star Wars trilogy by my parents who had recorded the movies, commercials included, when they were showing one night on TV. Upon first viewing, a few things stick out in the mind of a young boy watching Return of the Jedi such as:...

Empire Magazine (2008) Greatest Movies List - #85: Blue Velvet

Exactly how do you describe a David Lynch movie? He is one of the few directors whose style is so distinctive that his last name has become an adjective. According to Urban Dictionary, the definition of Lynchian is: “having the same balance between the macabre and the mundane found in the works of filmmaker David Lynch.” To see a prime example of that adjective film lovers need look no further than Lynch’s Blue Velvet (1986), which does indeed begin in the mundane before slowly sinking in macabre violence. My first introduction to the world of David Lynch was through his ground breaking, but unfortunately interrupted, early 1990s TV series Twin Peaks . This was one of the first television shows to grab viewers with a series-long mystery: who killed Laura Palmer? A mix of soap opera, police procedural, and the supernatural, it is a unique show that showed the darkness hidden in suburbia and remains influential to this day. Featuring Kyle MacLachlan as an FBI investigator with a l...

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