Film Forum

U.S., 1993
Directed by Brian De Palma
Written by David Koepp
Starring Al Pacino, Sean Penn, Penelope Ann Miller
Approx. 144 min. 35mm.

“CARLITO’S WAY is a confident blend of several types of movies. It’s a crime melodrama, with most of the attendant clichés accounted for and transcended, especially of the last job before retirement from the underworld. It’s a star vehicle, with Pacino riding high at the crest of a resurgence that began with Harold Becker’s superb 1989 thriller SEA OF LOVE and would continue through the 1990s and into the early aughts. It’s also a character study, filled to the brim with actors doing astonishing work—among them Sean Penn, Viggo Mortensen, John Leguizamo, and Luis Guzmán—with an unusual anecdotal structure. Vignettes interlock in surprising fashion, filling in the contours of Puerto Rican gangster Carlito’s life as he emerges from prison and is hit up by everyone for favors.” – Roger Ebert

Presented with support from The Ada Katz Fund for Literature in Film