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FiyaStarter RATING =  (3½)FiyaballsMovie
Review
Carlito's Way: Rise To Power A Prequel With No Back-Story, BRILLIANT! by: Reggie Eggert, for Entertainment  Has it ever grinded your gears when one of these prequels (or sequels for that matter) to one of your favorite movies has terribly stumbled its way into explaining the story to which it was based on? I know it has for me. I literally sit there monitoring how much time is left in the movie, trying to figure out how in the hell they’re going to plant four different sub-plot seeds in the next 25-minutes. Well, if it’s the rush to plot planting that you dislike in your prequel, then fret not, Carlito’s Way: Rise To Power is the movie for you. It doesn’t even make an attempt at that shit. No Viggo Mortensen in his damn wheelchair; no Penelope Ann Miller and her sweet, sassy ass; not even a drop of attorney David Kleinfeld’s shady-quirky dealings. No back-story will be found here whatsoever, so don’t cry when you don’t even get a sniff of Benny Blanco. Now, if you can get over the fact that this is as loose as possible tie-in to the first classic film, then you’re good to go, because the movie is pretty good on its own. I know what you’re thinking, “How can this joint be any good when it doesn’t have a damn thing to do with the first one?” Well, first of all, technically this is the first one, but I digress…but you have to take my word, it works out alright by way of a performance from the most unlikely character on the screen. No, not Puffy…well, maybe the second most unlikely character: Carlito. Yes, Carlito! Where the hell Hollywood been hiding this Jay Hernandez? Who? That ‘Lito, nigga. Respect him, even if he was in Torque. I’ve got to tell you, I frown upon no names imitating legends as much as the next disgruntled, poor 80’s rapper, but there were times in this film where Hernandez sounded more like the character Carlito to me than Pacino, himself. *Pause for the cause* Is it really that hard to believe? To be honest to you, I loved Al in the first, umm-second, whatever movie mainly because he showed his range and acted out a very good role, but put aside your Reasonable Doubt CD’s for a second and see Hernandez as someone who first of all is Latino and could really come to your neighborhood and you’d believe his name was actually Carlito Brigante. We’re not here to ruin your view of the aforementioned cinema god, so we’ll just leave it at that. Aside from Hernandez’s great performance, Puffy actually does an amicable job as Hollywood Nicky, as it's not much of stretch from the part he plays every day in real life. Domenick Lombardozzi, the white, goon cop from The Wire plays an authentic goomba and Mario Van Peoples shows up and he’s not SOLO, so we’re in business. This film centers around Carlito and his two partners; Earl (Van Peoples) and some fake Italian consigliere dude (Michael Kelly, Dawn of the Dead), who set up drug shop while balancing their relationships with the Black, Italian and Hispanic criminal communities and the pigs. Of course that can only last so long until something comes to fuck it up: Enter Reggie, Earl’s unauthentic militant dichead brother. He’s a fuck up who really needs to get shot. I mean, I’m not an advocate of drug selling, killing and other law violations, but they had that nigga set up sweet: money, clothes, lap dances eight days of the week, good ass bourbon and he found a way to fuck it up every time. I would have acted right, but you know, NIGGAS! So,
yeah, they have to clean Reggie’s mess up and Carlito gotta
stay cool for them voiceovers. The second part was done, almost
too easily. If this film had anything to do with the first, or
didn’t have Carlito’s Way in the title, or wasn’t
released straight to DVD it could have been great. Too bad for
Hernandez it was, so it’s just ok.
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FIYA NBA Ranks: #9 |
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