Review of Carlito`s Way Rise To Power

Introduction

In 1993, Brian De Palma released Carlito`s Way; a film about an ex-player who despite trying to keep clean, is sucked back into his former violent life. The star of that film was Al Pacino and this film is highly rated by fans of the genre. I`m not a massive gangster film fan, so I`ve never seen the original introduction to the man called Carlito Brigante.

Rise To Power is set a lot earlier in Brigante`s life. Carlito (played by LA-er Jay Hernandez) is roughly about 22 and serving a prison sentence for stealing cars. In a bit of an unusual move, both then and now apparently, the young Puerto Rican is part of an unlikely trio that crosses the racial divides that separate their native Harlem. Carlito hangs with cool black dude Earl (Mario Van Peebles) and Italian Rocco (Michael Kelly), who both persuade him to go into the drugs business with them when they are released from the joint.

The future is heroin and the Italians have got lots of it. The problem is that they only sell on their side of town. This unlikely triumvirate get the break they need, thanks to Rocco`s connections and Earl striking the right deal with black gangster Hollywood Nicky (Sean `I will have more names than Prince, you know` Combs). Hollywood controls the West side of Harlem and used to be known as Nicky X-Ray due to his uncanny ability to see people ripping him off. He kills without compunction all those of dare to cross him, and there is an uneasy alliance between Carlito`s associates and the flash gangster.

It all goes well for a while, and Carlito even manages to hook up with a `chick`, Letitia (Jaclyn DeSantis). Earl is also thinking of retiring to Barbados, but has to try to straighten out his brother Reggie (Mtume Gant). Earl entrusts Carlito to teach the lazy and radical-thinking Reggie how to act and be a player in the hope of letting him take over Earl`s rackets. Reggie has a massive chip on his shoulder though, and causes enough trouble to threaten the whole enterprise. With Earl in Barbados when Reggie upsets the Italians, Rocco and Carlito must act fast in order to prevent a war with the Italians.

Video

Picture starts off a little grainy, which doesn`t bode well, but then sharpens (much to my relief) into the good quality picture that you would expect from a modern film. Lots of 70`s colours, fashion and a good eye for detail.

Audio

Comes with DTS and 5.1 Surround tracks that are OK but don`t really utilise the surrounds that much. On the other hand, this is a film that doesn`t really need much in the way of surround. Plenty of choice in terms of languages for both subtitles and soundtrack.

Joe Delia`s soundtrack is suitably funky and Shaft-like, with plenty of that ol`Isaac Hayes vibe.

Features

Deleted Scenes - a series of deleted scenes that last for just over seven minutes. Most have been cut for the right reasons, they wouldn`t have detracted from the story but it`s exposition that was explained else-where. At least one should never have been cut though.

Gag reel - series of blown shots as actors start laughing over forgotten lines, goof about, etcetera, etcetera. Didn`t find any that were that memorable, but at least they don`t feel like they were staged.

Got Your Back: Carlito`s Brothers In Crime - 5 minute featurette that explains some of the background to the film and contains a major spoiler (so don`t watch it before you see the main feature…).

Bringing The Hood To Life - 7 minute featurette on recreating period Harlem

Making Of - 11 minute EPK-type thing, you know the sort of thing by now…

Set Tour With Earl - Mario Van Peebles tells it like it is for 3 minutes.

Trailers - for the main feature, Carlito`s Way and The Skeleton Key. Bit odd in my eyes, as the latter two trailers open the disc anyway so it`s a little overkill.

Not a bad set of extras for a film that was a straight to DVD release, the only really annoying thing was having to choose the language of subtitles every time before any of the Extras would play.

Conclusion

As I mentioned before, I haven`t seen Carlito`s Way. This means I come to this film with no expectations, which could be good or bad depending on your outlook. The universal opinion on imdb.com is not complimentary, and the fact that this disc starts off with a trailer for the DVD of the original film is either supreme confidence or plain stupidity. Personally I don`t understand how fans of the original can complain that this prequel is disrespectful as both films are taken from the books by Edwin Torres. Carlito`s Way was actually named after the novel that covers this film rather than its true title After Hours; it was changed purely to avoid confusion with a film by Scorcese from 1985.

One of the problems with iconic-esque films is that you can only see one actor as a given character. In this case, it is natural that most people can`t think of Carlito without associating the character with Pacino. That said, not only is Hernandez pretty good in the role, the character is aged only 22 or so in this piece and it would be pretty hard for Pacino to act that young. Not having seen Pacino play this role, I was quite happy to watch Hernandez swagger around Harlem doing his thang. Van Peebles and Kelly are also very effective, and there seems to be a real chemistry between the three leads.

The big surprise for me was seeing Sean `Puffy P.Diddy thingummy` Combs playing Hollywood Nicky. Less of a surprise was finding out that he provided his own wardrobe for the part. Hollywood is a very flash character, who also happens to be ruthless. Combs plays the part really well, and may well just have a semi-decent acting career in front of him. His was the stand-out performance for me. On the downside, however, Luis Guzman just didn`t seem to have a decent role to play in this film. He`s not in it much anyway, but his character just didn`t sit well with me and didn`t resonate at all. I guess he was brought back due to his connection with the original film, although he plays a different character, and it just feels a bit disappointing.

Admittedly the budget on this film was not that great and the whole thing was shot in 28 days, which is incredibly fast. Looking at those two facts in isolation, it doesn`t tend to look good as far as quality is concerned. Good job we have some fine actors, a good script and a good director then. As is probably natural with this genre, there are touches of Goodfellas and The Godfather (Parts I & II) to this film. It works well, although not a patch on those films, and at least lays the path open to another prequel that presumably covers the time between this film and the Pacino one.

Worth watching in my book.