There’s something that I just love about crime drama’s. I mean, you have your crimes, which immideatley create conflict, the very heart of drama, and then you have someone there trying to set things right by solving the crime and bringing the criminals to justice. They always seem to entail such deep plots, with big stakes and lots of killing, making an interesting story… most of the time. Now-a-days another element that seems omni present is in most of these stories is drugs; you most likely wouldn’t have a crime drama about a kid from the neighborhood running around town committing crimes without drugs figuring into it somehow.
In Carlito’s Way: Rise to Power, there are a bunch of kids from the neighborhood, and you guessed it, drugs up the wazoo! The movie starts with three ethnically diverse men in prison; an African American man, a Hispanic man and an Italian man. Now normally these three folks wouldn’t be caught dead together in this environment. However, in prison (not to mention, Hollywood) these three nationalities collide and form a bond. Upon there prison release, which just happens to be at the same time, they continue their bond in the drug marketing business, where they run into typical crime drama problems. Watch Mario Van Peebles, Luis Guzman and Sean Combs look really bad. I mean bad ass, you know… like gangsta.
In 1993 a film called Carlito’s Way came out, and it starred Sean Penn and Al Pacino. Twelve years later, our ideas have seemed to run completely dry, thus creating the ‘prequel phenomenon.’ I respect originality, but when you need to keep going back to the same story over and over again, it’s kind of lame. Now granted, I have never seen the original, unfortunately, however this can obviously not be a suitable sequel with a cast so lame compared to the previous.
For what it is, it’s not half bad. There are some good moments and some cheesy acting that I can see past, but the plot remains pretty dry considering it’s about drug distribution. What it seems to be more about is love making, and the occasional shoot out after a lengthy amount of dialogue has already taken me out of the film.
No, you guessed it, I did not care for this DVD, or its features which include: Deleted scenes, a look at how three friends created a crime empire in Harlem, a behind the scenes look at the creation of the 1960s Harlem set, and more! (it says so on the box) So if you like a simple crime story with some shooting, yeah I guess give it shot.
Movie Grade: C -
DVD Grade: D +
Overall Grade: D +
