It's difficult to talk about Carlito's Way without Scarface being mentioned, and not without reason - both are Brian DePalma films, and both star Al Pacino, and the two films are often compared and contrasted.
But what if that’s the point? What if the similarities are intentional, in that DePalma is intentionally wanting to draw comparisons between the two films. And lets go further, what if Brian DePalma is actively responding, apologising, deconstructing and disavowing the influence and fame of Scarface and Tony Montana through Carlito’s Way and Carlito Brigante. That DePalma was as tired of Scarface’s legacy as Carlito was of his?
Any mature reading of Scarface would conclude that it’s a cautionary tale. That Montana was self-destructive, flawed, and highly dangerous, his ending inevitable. As Elvira says, “can’t you see what we’re becoming. We’re losers.” But a common takeaway from the film – magnified and amplified by the hip hop generation that gave the film a cult following – is that Tony Montana is someone to aspire to be. Someone to emulate. Someone who took no sh*t from anybody, who clawed his way from the bottom of the barrel to becoming the king of an empire. He embodies the ultimate "rags-to-riches" story, and is adored for his unapologetic ambition, raw courage, and extreme self-confidence. Many viewers see him as an underdog who defied the odds to seize the American dream.
And this got me thinking. Scarface and Tony Montana have transcended pop culture to becoming icons that – for better or worse – ARE admired. Are looked at as aspirations instead of warmings. And what I wanted to posit today was the theory that Brian DePalma, well aware of his film’s reputation and sickened by it, spend 10 years – like his character Carlito who did 5 – reflecting on his choices, thinking hard about the fruits of his labour, and then returned to the crime genre and sought to take Tony down a notch or two, to offer audiences an inverse of the film whose intention was to undo the damage unwittingly done by Scarface, to make a sequel to the film of sorts, where the wild and now-legendary Tony Montana survives, cleans up, does his time and then tries to get out of the life.
For sure, there are similarities between the films, they are two sides of the same coin, with one following a determined man trying to get in and rise to the top, and the other a tired veteran who’s been there, done that, and wants out. There’s even scenes that seem to mimic each other. And upon a recent rewatch, I found it fascinating how there seems to be a fair few scenes from Carlito’s Way that mirror Scarface but put the titular character is a more unceremonious position. Let’s do a rundown of a few
Tony Montana’s most famous line is “Say hello to my little friend”, which jump stars a massacre. He comes out of his throne room, which is filled with coke and golden ornaments, full of bravado, with a gun in his hand so epic it doesn’t even really exist, and begins mowing down goons in spectacular fashion. By contrast, Carlito also delivers a taunting threat to his adversaries – here comes the pain – but instead of coming out of a majestic chamber he’s trapped in a toilet, with a measly pistol, an empty one at that, delivering empty threats, tense and fearful. The Scarface shootout is the cathartic climax of the film, the Carlito’s Way one is something of an intro to the film. Both men are trapped and against the odds but only one knows it. And whilst Scarface has Tony commit a massacre before he checks out, in Carlito’s Way, Brigante is presented with the aftermath of a massacre, death everywhere, he laments the wasted life of his kin – there’s an empty feel to the way this scene ends, a complete contrast to the release of Scarface’s shootout.
In Scarface it’s Tony’s one moment of humanity – sparring the wife and children – that comes back to bite him and triggers his downfall. Carlito also had numerous moments of humanity that came back to bite him, in particular sparring Benny Blanco, the man who ends up killing him. Both refuse to be ruthless at the crucial moment.
In Scarface Elvira is the blonde wife of drug Kingpin Frank Lopes who Tony ends up having an empty and hollow marriage with. The first time we see her is after Tony’s triumph against the Columbians, and she comes down the elevator and makes her way towards where Tony is sitting, Tony unable to break his gaze from her. In Carlito’s Way, the first time we see the blonde Gail – who Carlito wants to rekindle his relationship with, one far warmer and more real than the Scarface couple – while she busies herself with her dance class he is outside in the rain looking like a peeping Tom, with a dustbin over his head.
The movie opens with Carlito giving a grand Montana-esque speech in the courtroom about reforming, and we laugh along with him assuming the speech is dripping with sarcasm, but like Kleinfeld, like perhaps those who praised Scarface for its b*llsiness to DePalma’s face, we’re shocked and confused that Carlito is sincere in his intent to chase his ways.
And in the climax of Scarface Pacino is the aggressor mowing down his enemies, in Carlito’s Way he is being chased, running for his life, and in both films he is ultimately snuck up on and taken out.
Once you see Carlito’s Way as a reflection of Scarface, Pacino playing the weary Carlito as the ghost of Tony Montana, you can’t but notice these elements. Even Rolando – Carlito’s former partner – being played by the same guy who played the chainsaw wielding Hector in Scarface. Its Tony’s victory over Hector’s bad deal that opened the floodgates to him, meanwhile Ronaldo is stunned and flummoxed that Carlito is wilfully closing the gates on himself.
As mentioned, I feel complaints that Carlito’s Way is a lazy retread to be a lazy complaint in of itself, not least because even if the titular character was a stand in for Tony Montana, it’s an evolved, older, wiser one. Think to the party at the lawyer Kleinfield’s place – the excess, the debauchery, the kind of stuff Montana would involve himself in, and yet Carlito is sitting by himself, away from it all. In fact, the real stand in for Montana in the film is Kleinfeld, constantly coked out of his mind, paranoid, erratic, unhinged, insecure, and often exhibiting character moments that we can envisage from Tony Montana, like him becoming insecure and irritated about Gail dancing with another guy, when Carlito – his ego having soften over the years – not having a problem with it. Heck, Tony Montana went ballistic when his own sister was dancing with someone. Its Kleinfeld who reminds you more of Tony Montana, both making drug fuelled, manic decisions that land them in hot water.
I guess if we wanted to offer ourselves a little spectrum, we could say there are 4 different versions of Tony Montana in Carlito’s Way. Carlito is the version that lived long enough to see that he was a villain and the life gave him nothing, Kleinfeld is the current rendition of Montana, and Benny Blanco from the Bronx is the young, hungry version of the character, eager and willing to kill and steal his way to the top, eventually killing Brigante as Montana killed Frank. The film alludes to the connection between Carlito and Benny on numerous occasions, one of the most prominent being when Carlito threatens him saying “If I ever see you here you’re dead” but his eyes betray a soften, he’s doesn’t really have it in him. “The eyes never lie Chico” as our Cuban friend might say. Benny on the other hand claps back the same insult to Carlito, but with the ferocity of Tony Montana. At one point in the film a character even says to a nauseated Carlito “this guy is you 20 years ago”. Perhaps there is an element of Brian DePalma – wiser and older like Carlito – who looks back on Tony Montana slightly sickened, so gives him a stand-in in Carlito’s Way that presents him as the disrespectful and moronic representative of the new wave of criminals that he is.
And sticking with the idea that Benny Blanco is a younger version of Carlito, and he kills the titular character, well then in a very real sense Carlito’s past came back to quite literally kill him.
I’d also throw another version of Tony in there. How about Carlito’s young cousin Guajiro? He’s naïve, foolish, he drives around in a conspicuous car and carries around wads of cash on him, and crucially he idolizes Carlito. Is it too much of a stretch to suggest that Guajiro represents that very same hip hop generation, that guy with a Tony Montana poster in his bedroom, that guy who thinks he’s Scarface, who wants to be Scarface, tries to embody the ‘get rich or die trying’ mentality, but has no idea of the realities of the criminal underworld? “Yeah I had a dream, but now I’m awake” as Gail says. Scarface is the dream, the fantasy, and Carlito’s Way is the stark and tragic reality.
