Carlito’s Way + Carlito’s Way: Rise to Power (HD-DVDs)

 

 

Carlito’s Way (1993)

 

Picture: B+     Sound: B+     Extras: B     Film: B

 

 

Brian De Palma is a director that some people just don’t enjoy, appreciate, or even understand and for the most part is rather inconsistent in his talents.  De Palma is certainly a competent filmmaker, but often times struggles to be artist and commercially successful at the same time.  Carlito’s Way reunites De Palma 10 years later with Al Pacino after their 1983 success with Scarface.  Some found the film to disappoint and most were expecting the same level of performance from Scarface, but even years later the film still does not have near the popularity. 

 

Between these two pictures De Palma made a handful of films, including Body Double, Wise Guys, The Untouchables, Casualties of War, The Bonfire of the Vanities, and Raising Cain.  It’s certainly an era when De Palma was trying a variety of things and was attempting to be more diverse, but Carlito’s Way brought De Palma back to the modern gangster genre, which he seems to have a good grasp on.  Often times De Palma’s biggest challenge is remaining original, while at the same time paying his due to those that he admires and often emulates.  There is no doubt that he has a love and appreciation of the medium, but sometimes that seems to hinder his ability to make films that are original and consistent throughout. 

 

Al Pacino stars a Puerto Rican ex-con who has just been released from jail and is trying to get his life turned around from his old ways.  He now pledges to stay away from drugs and the thug lifestyle that he knew prior to jail.  However, hitting the streets of New York City again prove to make it difficult for Carlito to go on the straight and narrow.  He is pressured to return to the life of organized crime and this is the central theme to the film that makes it highly effective.  There is an ongoing exploration throughout the film on just how difficult it is for those involved in crime to stay away from it regardless of how intentional they are about getting out of that lifestyle.  It also seems to point to the fact that crime seems to find those who made a living out of it at one point or another, and during the film Carlito ends up getting mixed up with some situations that are gradually sucking him back into the life of crime. 

 

Carlito’s Way manages, despite some of its shortcomings, to remain as one of De Palma’s stronger films overall.  It operates though on a different level than most action-oriented gangster films and some might be disappointed to find that the film contains less action and more drama.  Not only that, but the action scenes are in fact dramatizes and stylized to the point where they become nearly acrobatic, which worked a bit better in Scarface, but still work well here. Later on De Palma tried this same thing with Snake Eyes and Femme Fatale and both films suffered from being too artistic without as much content. 

 

The 1080p 2.35 X 1 VC-1 digital High Definition image looks great, even some scenes that are in B&W and other stylistic moments look really sharp and detailed and demonstrate the great camerawork by Stephen H. Burum, who has worked with De Palma on quite a few films up to this point and would go on to make three more films with De Palma, including Mission to Mars, which the opening sequence of that film alone deserves accolades for the cameraman!  The camerawork on this manages to be gritty when it needs to be and glossy at other times, which works really well, as shot in real anamorphic Panavision with fine scope compositions.  De Palma and his cinematographers always create unique color palettes and interesting close-ups that work well (i.e. the pool table sequence and looking into the guys sunglasses to see behind him).  The tight stylized sequences really give the film its signature trademark and the HD-DVD demonstrates that beautifully.  

 

The soundtrack is also a real highlight and Patrick Doyle’s score shines through brilliantly, I can only hope that his work on Great Expectations (1998) will eventually be released on an HD format.  The 5.1 Dolby Digital TrueHD has fidelity that the DVD version could never really get, even the DVD edition with the DTS audio track.  Although I must say I would have liked to hear this film in DTS-HD as well. 

 

The film runs a bit long, nearly 2 1/2 hours, but the David Koepp screenplay manages to keep a good pace throughout that keep you involved.  While this is not my favorite DePalma film it’s certainly refreshing seeing the film in HD glory and this HD-DVD from Universal really hits some high marks in performance.  The extras are also quite interesting and I have seen them before, but were worth a glance, they include a few deleted scenes, some interviews with De Palma, and a ‘making of’ featurette.  DePalma is one of the most interesting directors to listen to and young filmmakers should take note of his wisdom.

 

 

Carlito’s Way: Rise to Power (HD-DVD)

 

Picture: B     Sound: B+     Extras: B-     Film: C

 

 

Ok, so take everything that was good about 1993’s Carlito’s Way and go the total opposite way and you have a disaster called Carlito’s Way: Rise to Power.  The film suffers for multiple reasons, the first is that its 10 year too late arrival makes little sense and connects in such poor ways to the 1993 that it isn’t even funny.  What they try to do here is go back in time to the 1960’s and turn this sequel into a prequel to the 1993, where Jay Hernandez tries his hardest to fill the shoes of Al Pacino (good luck with that), although it’s not totally his fault though because the acting talents of Mario Van Peebles and Luis Guzman are also wasted away and when P. Diddy shows up the entire reputation of the film is sidelined.  Although Puff’s role in 2001’s Made was actually quite funny, but anyone could have played that part.   

 

The second problem with the film is the director, Michael Bregman, who somehow got the impression that while working as an editing assistant on Brian De Palma’s 1983 film Scarface, that he knew something about directing a gangster film, well, he was wrong.  Since that time Bregman has mainly worked as a producer on several films, including Sea of Love, with Al Pacino, so again he has connection with Pacino, yet someone feels compelled to do total injustice to both De Palma and Pacino by directing this straight to video follow-up film in a lame attempt to cash in.  Although there is no need to worry, no one will mistake these two films no matter how hard they try and Bregman needs to go back to producing hits instead of trying to rehash them. 

 

Now the story is based, like the 1993, on the book series by Edwin Torres and the life of Carlito Brigante, but the film has such poor direction that more often than not the actors (despite their talents) don’t really know what to do with the material and look bored if nothing else.  The film is set during the 1960’s and involves the rise of Carlito as the Heroin Czar of his neighbor and the involvement of the Mafia in his life that inevitably causes turmoil and you never know who to trust and who might get killed next.  The tension in the film is formulaic and nothing special and it’s a shame that Bregman didn’t take notes from the DePalma film on how to edit this film in such a way to make it more interesting. 

 

The 1080p image looks intentionally gritty and the Adam Holender’s cinematography is too amateur-like to really work well.  The 1.85 X 1 image does not have the chemistry that worked so well with the 1993 film and the framing is boring and dull, just like the colors.  This is no fault of the HD-DVD from Universal though, but the obvious choices that the director and cameraman chose to work with in order to attempt a gritty crime-like film, as if they were making Se7en, which this film is clearly not as clever as that either.  The 1080p transfer looks about as good as it gets and does offer some nice deep blacks that only the HD formats could handle so well.  I can only imagine that this film on DVD would not have the deep dark colors without losing some detail in it.  This is a real highlight here, despite the film.  The Dolby Digital TrueHD 5.1 mix is also a highlight and works well, but does not have the interesting mix that bigger budget films have nor does it have the fantastic score that the 1993 had either.  Joe Delia’s musical score is un-interesting, clichéd, and predictable, which doesn’t help the momentum of the film either. 

 

In short, no matter how good this HD-DVD looks or sounds, it never helps the film because it’s that poor to begin with and while it does deliver in the performance category this is surely the way to try and endure the film.  If you have the power to muster this film and have some room left there are some extras as well including deleted scenes, a gag reel (which is what I thought the whole film was), and some other featurettes including a making of feature, but I don’t think even the biggest fan of the film will watch these more than once.

 

 

-   Nate Goss