Very few movies reveal the ending during the opening credits, and even fewer movies can pull it off. Carlito’s Way is one of those movies. The second collaboration between director Brian De Palma and actor Al Pacino is less about what happens and more about how it happens.

Al Pacino plays Carlito Brigante, a drug dealer, freshly released from prison, out to follow the straight and narrow. It’s a hard thing to accomplish when everyone you know, including the lawyer who convinced a judge to let you go free, is elbow-deep in criminal activity. It’s a world where a simple ride along can become a bloody shootout, and it’s not long before he’s wrapped up in that old way of life. Insert quote from The Godfather Part III here.

That aforementioned lawyer is David Kleinfeld, played by an increasingly-erratic, coke-addicted Sean Penn, who looks more like Dr. Steve Brule than you would expect. And while Carlito works his hardest to escape his life of crime, Kleinfeld is just beginning to get a taste for it. There’s also Carlito’s ex-girlfriend, Gail (Penelope Ann Miller before people knew her as Jeffrey Dahmer’s mother in that Netflix series), whom he still loves and wants nothing more than to escape the crime-infested New York City with her for a slice of paradise in the Caribbean.

And it’s that relationship with Gail that sets Carlito’s Way apart from De Palma’s other films. It gives the film a heart and a romantic side, a warmth maybe, whereas other films in his oeuvre are cold and grisly. Carlito has plans. He has dreams, and we so badly want to see him make those dreams a reality, despite knowing from the beginning how his story will end. There’s something deeper here than post-Hays Code Hitchcockian suspense at play, though there is plenty of that.

As with his other films, De Palma shines with his intense camera angles, three-sixty degree shots and kinetic editing. An early shootout in a backroom bar and the final chase through a subway station will have you white-knuckling your armrest and on the edge of your seat. As events unfold on the screen, you will increasingly find yourself hoping and praying that Carlito’s moral code (his way, I guess you could say) is enough to save him from being swallowed up by the lifestyle and city that made him.

Carlito’s Way didn’t receive much attention when it first came out. I presume people saw it as a rehash of Scarface, and therefore decided it wasn’t worth their time. But it has since received more acclaim in the years that followed, and rightfully so. Carlito’s Way deserves to be in consideration for one of Brian De Palma’s best films (alongside Blow Out) and one of Al Pacino’s best performances. It’s rapturous, like a dance on the beach.

Carlito’s Way is available in a brand new 4k edition from Arrow Video.