Chiasmus cult cinema trailers - "Carlito's Way" (1993). *These will be ongoing posts, courtesy of the A.Glass DVD collection. As I offer via Chiasmus Cult trailers, my summarized overviews*

Part of Brian de Palma's heavyweight crime, gangster movies from the 1970s and 1980s, "Carlito's Way" was based off the crime novels Carlito's Way and After Hours, written by former High Court Judge Edwin Torres, portraying the heyday of New York City's criminal underworld of the mid and late 1970s when heroin, was replaced by cocaine and organized crime in the Big Apple was at its most powerful.  The screenplay by David Koepp, who kept the script in tune with his adult themed melodrama in romanticizing the criminal world, whilst ensuring the 'no honour among thieves' ethos very much remains as the potent message, that crime doesn't pay.  

Al Pacino plays "Carlito Brigante", a once big time heroin dealer, belonging to the Puerto Rican crimes gangs of the Bronx, now an ex-convict.  Freed after five years, by his attorney and friend Dave Kleinfeld, played with gusto by Sean Penn, who found a legal discrepancy (illegal wiretapping) against Carlito via an over eager District Attorney.  De Palma masterfully sets up the sequence of events from its dramatic conclusion, to how it all began, when the Judge declared that Carlito is a freeman, vowing to leave crime behind him, and start a new life living in the Caribbean renting out cars to tourists.  Koepp's screenplay layers on that hope through the pitiful world of criminality, the reformed path through punishment is not an easy one, as Carlito is convinced to return to his old ways by Kleinfeld, who after five years of Carlito's incarceration, has become a gangster himself. 

De Palma's maintains his cinematic high tension, with its doomed love story, where Carlito's rekindles his relationship with "Gail", played by Penelope Ann Miller, showing the polar opposite worlds of Carlito and Gail, yet with similar aspirations and dreams.  With Gail hopeful that one day she will become a broadway star, and Carlito trying to reform his life, instead revealing its shakespearean tragedy.  As the odds begin to stake up against them both, with Carlito being dragged back into his former lifestyle by a 'coke' addicted Kleinfeld, who, and this is a spoiler, eventually ends up betrayed him, all the while a pregnant Gail stands by Carlito to the very end, as they both try hopelessly to escape from the 'City' to begin again.  

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(A.Glass 2025)

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