Carlito's Way

Universal Pictures | Release Date: November 12, 1993

CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION

66	METASCORE Generally favorable reviews based on 25 Critic Reviews

Positive:

Mixed:

Negative:

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Critic Reviews

Critic score Publication By date

100

Zach Campbell

Though the story in Carlito’s Way is treated in a fatalistic sense, the moment-to-moment, frame-to-frame experience is anything but rigid and stodgy from over-determination. It sings, dances, punches, slinks, embeds. It moves like the luxurious tracking shots that punctuate the film. Read full review

100

EmpireKim Newman

Utterly compelling - Sean Penn is a powerhouse in support - and with a railway station set - piece in which De Palma actually betters what was his previously Untouchable effort. Read full review

Michael Sragow

Penn, with curled hair and wire-rims, makes a brilliant, slippery high-end shyster; his modulated hysteria is amazing. So is Brian De Palma’s direction. Few films actually made in the disco era can match the kinetic allure of this 1993 production, which has a bluesy undertow all its own. Read full review

R.L. Shaffer

Carlito's Way, like Casualties of War and Mission: Impossible, seems to stand at a nexus between commercial fealty and directorial idiosyncrasy; it's a sort of half-breed film that exudes personal vision but functions satisfactorily for the multiplex crowds at the same time. Read full review

Roger Ebert

The acting here, by Sean Penn, is a virtuoso tour de force - one of those performances that takes on a life of its own. Read full review

Jay Carr

Carlito's Way reunites the Scarface team of Al Pacino and director Brian De Palma to much better effect than the first time around, proving there's a lot of life still to be found in the conventional urban-gangster movie. [12 Nov 1993, p.45]

Jay Boyar

Imagine the most exciting parts of The Fugitive but filmed with real moviemaking brio by director Brian De Palma (The Untouchables). [12 Nov 1993, p.20]

Marjorie Baumgarten

With a concluding chase/shoot-out episode that might even make Hitchcock jealous, Carlito's Way is a dandy piece of entertainment. If the story needs a bit more depth and reason, who really cares? There's hardly time to notice. Read full review

Owen Gleiberman

Carlito’s Way is perfectly okay entertainment, yet this 2-hour-and-21-minute movie never convinced me it wouldn’t have been every bit as good (if not better) as a lean and mean Miami Vice episode. Read full review

Harper Barnes

Sean Penn is excellent as a lawyer who gets in way over his modish curls, but the movie belongs to Pacino, who gives a remarkably controlled performance as a Wise Guy desperately trying to get smart. It's one of Pacino's best roles. [12 Nov 1993, p.3G]

TV Guide MagazineStaff (Not Credited)

Al Pacino gives an urgent, bravura performance as the title character. Read full review

Michael Wilmington

Big and violent, dark and operatic, both stingingly real and maddeningly overblown. But what gives it resonance is Pacino's performance. Read full review

Staff (Not Credited)

Handsomely made, expertly directed and colorfully acted, it should satisfy action buffs and slightly more sophisticated audiences. That adds up to solid commercial prospects at home and abroad that are just shy of blockbuster returns. Read full review

Desson Thomson

Below the attention-getting surface, there's no sense of humanity underneath. The day De Palma pulls away the masks from his characters, they'll start to breathe -- and so will his films. Read full review

Kenneth Turan

A mid-level commercial thriller, it is a solid and acceptable if not overwhelmingly exciting piece of work from a star and a director not previously known for their centrist tendencies. Read full review

Janet Maslin

Carlito's Way is best watched as lively, colorful posturing and as a fine demonstration of this director's bravura visual style. Read full review

Staff (Not Credited)

It runs long and is ultimately not much more than a showpiece, but Pacino looks every inch a movie star, and De Palma provides a timely reminder of just how impoverished the Hollywood lexicon has become since the glory days of the '70s. Read full review

Steve Persall

Carlito's Way isn't a bad movie, just one that could be much better with more of the subversiveness that Pacino and De Palma wrought in Scarface. [12 Nov 1993, p.8]

James Berardinelli

Carlito's Way probably should have been a taut thriller, but choices by DePalma in both presentation and editing have hamstrung it. Read full review

Patricia Bibby

It's fitting that director Brian De Palma's latest effort, Carlito's Way, begins and ends inside a train station, because this is a movie that's seriously derailed. [09 Nov 1993]

Bill Cosford

Carlito's Way reminds you a little of De Palma's remake of Scarface -- it has that jazzy, coke-frazzled bang and crash to it, the feeling of too many people chasing too many highs. But it's nowhere near as successful. It's not as shocking. It even feels . . . dated. [12 Nov 1993, p.G5]

Peter Stack

The colorful, character-rich details of Carlito's Way provide the fire and fun in Brian De Palma's latest suspense opera, which dives into a Spanish Harlem swaggering and swaying with macho and meanness. But it's a bloated picture, full of itself in the name film art. [12 Nov 1993, p.C1]

Rick Groen

Although there are some fluid moments, De Palma's weary direction of a once-feared mobster trying to go straight against all odds seems pistol-whipped. [15 Nov 1993]

Hal Hinson

About halfway through, the overwhelming fact that the movie is a complete nothing becomes too much to ignore. Read full review

Peter Travers

There’s a secondhand feel to the way this gangster movie delivers the goods. Carlito’s Way is haunted by a ghost from De Palma and Pacino’s past — Scarface. Read full review