Scarface/Casino/Carlito’s Way

Triple-bill of gangster thrillers. In ‘Scarface’ (1983), up-and-coming gangster Tony Montana (Al Pacino) arrives in Miami as a Cuban refugee. With his friend Manny (Stephen Bauer), Tony carries out a hit on a politician, earning him the gratitude of drug dealer Frank Lopez (Robert Loggia). Tony rises rapidly in the ‘organization’, but courts disaster when he becomes involved with Lopez’s cocaine-addicted wife, Elvira (Michelle Pfeiffer). In ‘Casino’ (1995), Robert De Niro plays Sam ‘Ace’ Rothstein, the mob’s frontman for a billion dollar Las Vegas casino. The story begins in 1973; Ace falls for hooker Ginger McKenna (Sharon Stone), while boyhood companion Nicky Santoro (Joe Pesci) is appointed as his muscle at the club. Over the years various jealousies surface and erupt in a series of violent betrayals and, ultimately, the destruction of Rothstein’s empire. Finally, in ‘Carlito’s Way’ (1993), Carlito Brigante (Pacino) is a Hispanic drugs boss just released from prison. Determined to go straight and move to the Bahamas with his girlfriend, Gail (Penelope Ann Miller), Carlito is tempted back to the wrong side of the law by his lawyer, nerdish coke-head David Kleinfeld (Sean Penn), for ‘one last job’. Brian De Palma directs this visually eloquent film about a man’s inevitable tragic demise with his familiar penchant for the big set piece and violent action.