Curator Watchlist
A stylish, mournful gangster drama with De Palma’s signature bravura set pieces and one of Pacino’s most magnetic late-era performances. It’s less about crime mechanics than about a man trying, and failing, to outrun his past.
Where to watch: Buy
Wed · 2h 24m
Director: Brian De Palma
Starring: Al Pacino, Sean Penn, Penelope Ann Miller
Free after years in prison, Carlito Brigante intends to give up his criminal ways, but it's not long before the ex-con is sucked back into the New York City underworld.
Brian De Palma
Al Pacino, Sean Penn, Penelope Ann Miller
A stylish, mournful gangster drama with De Palma’s signature bravura set pieces and one of Pacino’s most magnetic late-era performances. It’s less about crime mechanics than about a man trying, and failing, to outrun his past.
Brian De Palma turns a familiar rise-and-fall gangster premise into something elegiac and feverish. Carlito is not chasing power so much as a second chance, and the film’s real tension comes from watching the past close in on him anyway.
Al Pacino gives the role a weary, romantic gravity, while Sean Penn is gloriously grotesque as the self-destructive lawyer who drags the story toward chaos. De Palma stages the movie with swooping confidence, building toward a finale that is both technically dazzling and emotionally fatalistic.
What lingers is the mood: a world of bad decisions, doomed loyalty, and the fantasy that one clean exit might still be possible. It’s a gangster film with a bruised heart, and that melancholy gives the spectacle its bite.
Patrick Willems (4★) · 2233 likes
De Palma's a legend for only casting Sean Penn as the most unlikable scumbags
matt lynch (4★) · 1924 likes
Once it was "The World is Yours", now it's "Escape to Paradise". Shit ain't what it used to be.
#1 gizmo fan (4★) · 1866 likes
would do literally anything to have al pacino break down my door just to have sex with me
SilentDawn (5★) · 1374 likes
96 "Adiós, counselor." Brian De Palma sets the stage and Al Pacino just walks off, disco blaring. The two are usually only as electrifying as their material, and here, with a sharp, swooning machismo weepie, they both shine as bright as can be. De Palma's set-pieces, whether operatic (the final nightclub/train station chase) or intimate (the playful seduction between Carlito and Gail behind the apartment door) are perfect, and Pacino is given plenty of space to create. A key moment… more
Chris Evangelista (4★) · 1280 likes
“Maybe he’ll make it this time,” I think every time I watch this
Another De Palma crime epic with grand set pieces, moral brinkmanship, and a muscular sense of spectacle.
A larger-than-life companion piece about ambition, self-destruction, and the cost of trying to outrun the life you built.
For a similarly serious, adult crime world where professional codes, loneliness, and inevitability drive the drama.
If the appeal is the relentless pursuit and expertly staged urban chase energy, this delivers pure momentum.
A slick 1990s crime puzzle with betrayal, swagger, and a fatalistic undercurrent.
A prequel that extends the character’s criminal mythology, useful if you want more of the same world.
A stylish underworld tale about loyalty, manipulation, and the impossible dream of staying clean.
A hard-edged crime drama about a man trying to control a world that is already slipping away from him.
For a more subdued, fatalistic take on criminal survival and the dead-end logic of the underworld.
A cool, lonely crime film about one last score, professional pride, and the fantasy of escape.
A bruised, character-first crime story with melancholy, pressure, and a sense of doomed masculinity.
A street-level portrait of loyalty, Catholic guilt, and men trapped by their own codes.
redemption, fatalism, crime underworld, loyalty and betrayal, second chances, masculinity, urban decay, moral compromise
gangster drama, crime thriller, neo-noir, 1990s cinema, operatic style, antihero, redemption arc, New York City, macho melodrama, chase sequence