Movie Review

Carlito's Way

What this movie is basically about is this Puerto Rican drug dealer named Carlito Brigante(Al Pacino) has just been released from prison. He hopes to fly straight outside of jail, but his lawyer, David Kleinfeld(Sean Penn) slowly but surely sucks him back into crime. He unforutunately has to help his cousin Guajiro(John Ortiz) do a drug deal at a bar. Things go wrong and Guajiro is killed and that forces Carlito to shoot his way out. Beofre leaving, he takes the $30,000 he sees on the bar. He then goes to a local bar called El Paraiso, where he hopes to buy into a club run by a gambling addict named Saso(Jorge Porcel) so he can save up $75,000 to retire to the Caribbean.

After a while, he starts to notice a young, up and coming gangster from thte Bronx, named Benny Blanco(John Leguizamo), who thinks he's someone special. He also wants to re-cement his relationship with Gail, a ballet dancer who moonlights as a stripper and was also his girlfriend before he went in to prison.

Benny Blanco

Things go from bad to worse. As it turns out, Kleinfeld has stolen $1 million in payoff money from his Italian mafia client Anthony "Tony T" Taglialucci. Kleinfeld is forced into helping him escape from the Rikers Island prison barge, and he repeatedly asks for Carlito's help. He refuses and one night, under the cover of dark, Carlito, Kleinfeld and Tony T's son Frankie motor out to the prison barge where Tony is. When they get Tony on board, Kleinfeld slits Frankie's throat and Tony is bludgeoned to death and he finally throws both of their bodies overboard. After this, Carlito severs all ties to Kleinfeld. He decides to leave town with his girlfriend Gail. Meanwhile, Kleinfeld is stabbed in the chest by 2 mobsters in his office.

Then things do get worse, as Carlito is arrested by the police and has to talk to District Attorney Norwalks(James Rebhorn), where he plays a tape with Kleinfeld's voice on it making criminal accusations against Carlito. The DA tells him that he is an accomplice to the Taglialucci murders. He then visits his lawyer in the hospital, where he confesses he sold out Carlito. When he entered the lobby, he seen a suspicious man in a police uniform, which turned out to be Tony T's other son Vinnie(Joseph Siravo). He takes Kleinfeld's revolver and leaves the hospital, and when Carlito is gone, Vinnie goes to Kleinfeld's room and kills him.

Carlito goes to the train station to buy tickets for him and Gail, who is now pregnant with his child. When he stops by the club he now co-owns, he is stopped by a group of Italian mobsters led by Vinnie. They plan on killing him, but he manages to escape through a secret exit. This little fight of theire finally ends in Grand Central Station, where Vinnie is killed by police attracted to the scene because of all the gunfire.

By now, Carlito is running to catch up to Gail and his gangster friend Pachanga(Luiz Guzman). He is then somehow shot by Benny Blanco, who was in disguise, who shoots Carlito several times in the stomach with a silenced gun. Pachanga tells the slowly dying Carlito he is now working for Blanco, only to be shot as well. Carlito hands a teary eyed Gail the moeny from the club and tells her to get herself and her unborn child somewhere safe to start a new life somewhere else. As the EMTs ar wheeling him away on a gurney, he looks at a billboard that bears an image of a Caribbean beach and a woman. As Carlito passes away, the billobard comes to life in his mind and the woman in the picture is Gail.

My rating of this movie is a 10 out of 10, a 5 out of 5 star rating. It's a little gory, and has occasional bad words here and there, but is pretty good. Not suprisingly, it has an R rating, so kids may not be able to watch it, but I like it, it's pretty cool, and Al Pacino is one of my fave actors.