Carlito's Way

Carlito's Way (1993) is a crime thriller by Brian De Palma you can watch online on iFILM. Al Pacino plays Carlito Brigante, a Puerto Rican drug lord who walks out of a New York prison after five years and means every word when he says he's done. He has a plan: save enough from running a nightclub, get to the Bahamas, start clean.

The city has a different idea. His lawyer David Kleinfeld — Sean Penn, almost unrecognizable under a perm and thick glasses — keeps pulling him back into the current. Then there's Benny Blanco from the Bronx, played by a young John Leguizamo, who sees Carlito as an obstacle rather than a person. Viggo Mortensen shows up in a sharp supporting turn. De Palma builds the whole film as a slow countdown the audience can see coming from the opening frame, and that foreknowledge is exactly what makes it hurt.

Shot on location in New York on a $30 million budget, the film stands alongside Scarface as the defining De Palma–Pacino collaboration of the era. Watch Carlito's Way (1993) in full online on iFILM.