Word: carlito
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...told more than once, Carlito Brigante (Al Pacino) gained his education almost entirely on the streets of Spanish Harlem. That is too bad. If he had spent more time at home watching the old Late Show, he would have known from the early gangster movies (especially James Cagney's) that there comes a moment in any criminal career when it becomes impossible to go straight, no matter how much you want to. It's an image problem with tragic dimensions...
Brian De Palma has, of course, seen Angels with Dirty Faces and The Roaring Twenties. No director knows the traditions of the violent genres better or is better at bringing them back to rushing life. And in Carlito's Way David Koepp has given him a script that works smart variants on the gangster film's classic conventions. Early on we find Carlito in court, about to be sprung after serving just five years of a 30-year rap, making a grandiose speech thanking everyone who has helped him. It's a fine bit, which, as the judge sourly comments...
This nice comic weirdness signals that business is not going to be conducted as usual. Carlito, like most reform-minded hoods, has a naive vision of the honest life. He hopes to buy into a car-rental agency. He also hopes to rekindle his old flame, Gail (Penelope Ann Miller), once a respectable chorus girl, now working topless in a go-go club...
...Carlito needs more than a good woman to avoid recidivism. He needs Pat O'Brien. You remember Pat O'Brien, Cagney's superego, trying to keep his wayward pal on a righteous path. What Carlito has instead is his friend and shyster lawyer, Dave Kleinfeld (Sean Penn, in a terrific performance). He is in too far with the Mob, and he needs Carlito's muscular help in a cockamamie plan to avoid gangland's vengeance. It goes awry, naturally, and Carlito's subsequent flight brings out the best in De Palma -- breathless, bravura moviemaking, intricately designed, but playing like...
...allowed. After the ceremony the weeping Dowager Maria Luisa embraced Dolores, said: "My daughter, since this is what you wanted, I pray God you may be happy." Prince Adan was the only one of the wedding party to wave goodbye. Said Prince Adan: "How wonderful! I love Don Carlito and I'll have plenty of holidays with no studying...