Carlito's Way

[yoloswegmaster]

Academy Award winner Al Pacino reunites with his Scarface director Brian De Palma for this tough-minded thriller about a gangster looking for salvation down the mean streets of 1970s New York City.

Gangster Carlito Brigante (Pacino) gets released early from prison thanks to the work of his lawyer, Kleinfeld (Sean Penn, Milk). Vowing to go straight, Carlito nonetheless finds dangers waiting for him in the outside world. As Carlito works toward redemption, Kleinfeld sinks into cocaine-fueled corruption. When Kleinfeld crosses the mob, Carlito gets caught in the crossfire and has to face a hard choice: remain loyal to the friend who freed him or protect a new life with the woman he loves (Penelope Ann Miller, The Relic). With enemies closing in from all sides, Carlito must find his way before it’s too late.

Also starring John Leguizamo (Land of the Dead), Luis Guzmán (Magnolia), and Viggo Mortensen (The Lord of the Rings), Carlito’s Way has come to be regarded as among De Palma’s most accomplished films. A hard-hitting gangster noir laced with romance and melancholy, powerful performances and nail-biting suspense.

4K DUAL FORMAT LIMITED EDITION CONTENTS
- Limited edition packaging with reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Obviously Creative
- Double-sided fold-out poster featuring newly-commissioned artwork by Tom Ralston and Obviously Creative
- Seven double-sided, postcard-sized lobby card reproductions
- Illustrated collector’s booklet featuring new writing on the film by Barry Forshaw and original production notes

DISC ONE: FEATURE (4K ULTRA HD BLU-RAY)
- 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray (2160p) presentation in High Dynamic Range
- Original stereo, 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio and DTS-X audio
- Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
- Brand new audio commentary by Matt Zoller Seitz, author of The Wes Anderson Collection and The Soprano Sessions
- Brand new audio commentary by Dr. Douglas Keesey, author of Brian De Palma’s Split-Screen: A Life in Film

DISC TWO: FEATURE AND EXTRAS (BLU-RAY)
- High Definition Blu-ray (1080p) presentation
- Original stereo and 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio
- Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
- Brand new audio commentary by Matt Zoller Seitz
- Brand new audio commentary by Dr Douglas Keesey
- Carlito and the Judge, a brand new interview with Judge Edwin Torres, author of the novels Carlito’s Way and After Hours on which the screenplay for Carlito’s Way is based
- Cutting Carlito’s Way, a brand new interview with editors Bill Pankow and Kristina Boden
- De Palma’s Way, a brand new appreciation by film critic David Edelstein
- All the Stitches in the World: The Locations of Carlito’s Way, a brand new look at the New York locations of Carlito’s Way and how they look today
- De Palma on Carlito’s Way, an archival interview with director Brian De Palma
- The Making of Carlito’s Way, an archival documentary on the making of the film, produced for the original DVD release
- Original promotional featurette
- Theatrical teaser and trailer
- Image gallery

[EddieLarkin]

Very very important that Arrow make sure they get the US deliverable for this that has the OG location markers and burnt in theatrical subtitles.

What the UK got on the Uni UHD (along with the other Euro territories) was shitty player generated subtitles for both the Spanish dialogue (which is one thing) and location markers (which is inexcusable).

Edit: oh, this is a US only release?

[Drucker]

Been meaning to check this film out for years, and this will finally get me to do so.

[Mr Sausage]

I'm not a De Palma fan, but this movie really worked for me. It was funny, sad, moving, exciting, and overall a more interesting movie than Scarface.

[therewillbeblus]

Yeah it’s been a while since I’ve seen it but I think it’s interesting if seen as an apology for Scarface. I always loved it as a kid, and watching Sean Penn have fun escaping into such an un-serious role for him is a real treat

[Rayon Vert]

I love that film, always a joy to revisit. It's not the typical quirky "pure cinema" De Palma movie like Body Double or Raising Cain or Obsession, it belongs more among his more mainstream and "commercial" films, but it works.

[flyonthewall2983]

The trailer with the music from Born on the Fourth of July is an effective one. It’s use of the Joe Cocker song utterly redefined it for me.

[Finch]

The train station finale is a nailbiter which Hitchcock would have appreciated but the rest of the film is no slouch either. I saw Scarface once and that was enough (the Hawks original is so much better and shorter at that) while I can rewatch this film and not tire of it. It helps that Pacino's performance in it isn't hammy and shouty like in Scent of a Woman or Heat, at least from what I can remember.

PS. I'm looking forward to AxeYou's breakdown of the OG sound. I overlooked this in the specs so I might get the standard edition in a sale.

[Mr Sausage]

A lot of De Palma set pieces have a show-offy, look-at-me quality that that can be distancing, but not that train station finale. It's bravura as expected, but anchored more in the emotions the film has built up around its characters than in a self-awareness of film technique. You know how great it is when you reflect that you already knew how it was all going to work out, and yet it was nail-biting all the same.

[therewillbeblus]

That's how I feel about all of Blow Out, none of which feels "show-offy" to me, though it's not taking itself too seriously either

[colinr0380]

A lot of De Palma set pieces have a show-offy, look-at-me quality that that can be distancing, but not that train station finale. It's bravura as expected, but anchored more in the emotions the film has built up around its characters than in a self-awareness of film technique. You know how great it is when you reflect that you already knew how it was all going to work out, and yet it was nail-biting all the same.

Very much seconded. That whole final sequence (like Blow Out's) from leaving the club and getting onto the train network may be one of the most thrilling sustained action sequences in 90s cinema, and endlessly rewatchable. A masterful use of building suspense where even when you know where its going, it is hard to keep from hoping that on this viewing something might happen to swerve events off of their predetermined tracks slightly! De Palma in all his films, but this one most particularly, is probably the director best fitted to the term 'operatic', pushing the stylistics to extremes to revel in directly expressed to the audience highly strung emotions and leaves us mulling over the gorgeously painful final impact of all of the what could have beens, but never weres.

[EddieLarkin]

PS. I'm looking forward to AxeYou's breakdown of the OG sound. I overlooked this in the specs so I might get the standard edition in a sale.

The Uni UHD only had a DTS:X remix, whilst Arrow calls the 2.0 stereo track "original", but in fact the film debuted in DTS 5.1 on original release, so that one will likely be the most OG.

[therewillbeblus]

Revisited this on Arrow's new 4K disc (which looks stunning, by the way) and the film exceeded my memory's esteem in just about every respect. The set pieces are just as exciting as they ever were - but there are also 'mini'-set pieces in a sense, so many smaller moments shot and executed with a lyrical fervor by a master of economic movement fully self-actualized. What surprised me was how "adult" the film is. I hadn't returned to it since I was a kid, but my earlier reading of this as "an apology for Scarface" was more right than I anticipated, as the artists opt for authentically mature nuances to communicate drama in an expressive shorthand which practically subverts Gangster Drama expectations when spotlit. This is partly due to the script or source material, but moreso credited to the actors, Pacino in particular, who restrains himself and trusts the audience to join him in comprehending and respecting the ineffable task of explaining in a sugary way why, say, he has trouble answering a question about killing people. Even if there's an objective simplicity, the context it's too complex to state, and may not even be worth doing - "understanding" on a literal, surface level isn't the point when framing lonely characters trying to connect vulnerably toward intimacy. Same goes for the conflict with the D.A. - a dynamic which amusingly starts as a cathartic mockery in the courtroom and evolves towards a diffusion of expected emotive activity as the film actually moves towards its climax. Not didactically conveying Carlito's code to be a reduced to a judgmental folly, but leaning into that sadness with him and still half-admiring a man who sticks to a code at all in this new world, while also seeing his sobriety to its problematically unreciprocated utility as an affirming marker of evolution.

This is a film where we understand that he needed to experience a revelation himself rather than submit to the pleas of Penelope Ann Miller (whose lackluster perf is the film's sole weakness), not because "he's hardheaded" but because that's how life works when you're processing the friction between your developed 'self' and your now-eroding social context's morals that have protected you like a coat of armor your whole life. It's not just a contemplative, mature ex-con erasing the bombastic naivete of Tony Montana, but a rich character who can still let his hubris get him into trouble on instinct (thankfully without winky visual cues prompting the audience to pay attention to this monumental fuckup - no, they are shot with the same careful temperament consistency sewn throughout, which formally respects its principal character as 'doing the best he can' and believing that). Pacino can and does recognize and own these slips, and pivots from them with self-consciousness but not overly-emphasized meditation. The narration -from De Palma's film grammar to Pacino's voiceover- appropriately transmits realistic bubble thoughts cast aside to face the next thing around the corner. And it's a consistently-engaging, impressively-constructed gangster drama to boot, evading even the margins of melodrama until they service life's greatest climax.