A gangster in New York gets thirty years in prison. But his lawyer manages to have that reduced to five years. He is truly trying to remain clean and to make some rather honest money in a club, though he gets the necessary investment from a bad deal that had cost the life of a few people. He was only an asset to a younger dealer, a recommendation, a referee if you want, aired and exhibited by the younger one. But that younger one was dealing with young gangsters and of course they tricked him into dying, losing his money and getting nothing, except that Carlito puts things right, to his own and sole benefit. But he has to deal with a vast Italian family in his club and outside. The main twist in the plot is that the lawyer who rescued him out of prison had been dealing with these gangsters, and this family in particular, even trapping one in prison after appropriating the million dollars this particular gangster had made in his business. But a lawyer will always be an amateur gangster and he drags Carlito into the last act of his own drama. That will cost their lives to the lawyer, Carlito and half a dozen members of the family in the brilliant setting of Grand Central Station. At the very moment when he could have walked out of this life of outcast crime, he is reminded that the leash that is attached around his neck will never disappear. This film has some depth somewhere about the great ease with which honest people can become dishonest, and at times with the idea that they are not dishonest since the people they steal or rob are thieves themselves. The code of the street is all powerful and definitely stronger than any law imaginable. The film is brilliant too as an action film, even, this time with suspense and great actors, Al Pacino being doubled up by Sean Penn. Brilliant rendering of the dilemma of a drug lord turned old and would-be honest.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne, University Paris 12 Créteil, CEGID
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne, University Paris 12 Créteil, CEGID