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

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