thriller | Destined for Mediocrity

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.

The Cold War was a time of great paranoia. Was Russia going to blow everyone up? Was your next door neighbor a spy? Were the people teaching your children or making your movies Communists? Unfortunately, over 30 years after the Cold War officially ended, some of these questions still remain. But instead of talking politics, let’s talk about movies. These are the Top 10 Cold War Era Films…according to me.

10. North By Northwest

Not Hitchcock’s best by a long shot. Not Cary Grant’s best by a longer shot. But it is the best film involving Mount Rushmore. It’s a classic thriller – a story of mistaken identity where our hero is in the wrong place at the wrong time, where a perfectly-timed photo might not be as it appears, where government agencies willingly put individuals at risk for the “greater good”. It’s hokey, but it’s a lot of fun, and it’s got that iconic shot of Cary Grant running from a plane.

9. The Courier

Benedict Cumberbatch is the British electrical equipment salesman, Greville Wynne, who serves his country by acting as a courier between England and Russia. He befriends his Russian correspondent and learns that not all comrades are bad, but the ones that are bad, are really bad. Merab Ninidze claims the screen as Oleg Penkovsky.

8. The Hunt for Red October

Alec Baldwin plays CIA analyst, Jack Ryan, before Harrison Ford came along and played it better. Tensions build and claustrophobia looms large as Ryan must work out negotiations between defecting Soviet naval captain, Marko Ramius – Sean Connery’s best role, and I’ll fight anyone who disagrees – and the United States before the U.S. and Russian navies come to blows and destroy one another.

7. Rocky IV

“If I can change, we all can change,” Rocky yells at a crowd of Russians after he has knocked out their favorite boxer, Ivan Drogo, and turned an arena full of boos into cheers. It’s a rallying moment for the audience too, since we’re all relieved that he not only won, but avenged his rival and friend, Apollo Creed. This movie features not one, but two training montages set to cheesy 80’s tunes that should definitely be on everyone’s workout playlist.

6. The Iron Giant

Hogarth Hughes is your typical nine-year-old boy. He loves comic books and riding his bike – oh! – and he befriends a 50-foot robot from outer space. Having a giant, iron robot for a best friend is tough enough, but it’s even tougher when you have a U.S. government agent staying at your house, investigating the mysterious goings-on in the town of Rockwell. Luckily, Hogarth knows Dean McCoppin, a beatnik artist, who helps hide his new alien friend.

5. Hail, Caesar!

Like some of the other films on this list, the Cold War is really just the backdrop of this Coen Brothers ode to Hollywood. A group of blacklisted Communist screenwriters are pulling the strings of some of the film’s major events, but this movie is mostly about Eddie Mannix, the studio fixer who is tasked with keeping the stars’ improper personal lives out of the hands of the gossip columnist. He’s got a lot on his plate when his big movie star, Baird Whitlock (George Clooney playing another classic Coen doofus), goes missing in the middle of filming the studio’s big sword and sandals picture.

4. The Lives of Others

Simply one of the best spy movies of all time. Gerd Wiesler, or HGW XX/7, is a captain of the Stasi who has been instructed to bug and survey the apartment of Georg Dreyman, a playwright whose sole crime is the fact that he’s dating an actress who has caught the eye of the Minister of Culture. Wiesler wrestles with the morality of his position after learning the true reason for his assignment, and decides to play the role of Dreyman’s guardian angel. A traitor with a moral compass makes for the best character studies.

3. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

Based on the novel by Le Carre, this star-studded British spy drama leaves you guessing until the very end. George Smiley must investigate within his agency to find who of the higher-ups in British Intelligence is a mole for the Soviets. Red herring after red herring gets in his way until he finally gets down to the bottom of it. And by then, what has Smiley lost in the process? Gary Oldman leads a cast of heavy-hitters that include Colin Firth, Benedict Cumberbatch, Mark Strong, and Tom Hardy.

2. Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

Slim Pickens riding a missile like a horse, Peter Sellers (in one of his three roles) wrestling with his own artificial hand, Sterling Hayden’s rant about what the Communists are going to do to everyone’s bodily fluids, the phone call with Dmitri – there are too many great scenes in this film to list them all. Satirically skewering national relations during the Cold War, Stanley Kubrick left none alive in one of the funniest movies of all time.

1. The Third Man

This film is nearly perfect and certainly one of the best Noirs of all time. Impeccably acted and supremely shot, this movie withstands all tests of time. Holly Martins comes to Vienna at the request of his old childhood friend, Harry Lime, only to discover upon his arrival that Lime is dead. Conflicting accounts on who was present at Lime’s death lead Martins on a twisted ride through the streets of Vienna and down into its sewers for one of the most exciting endings to any film, ever. Joseph Cotten and Orson Welles are at their absolute best in this masterpiece of cinema.