Brian De Palma at his peak, an excellent cohesive gangster melodrama with Al Pacino as a Bogart/Cagney type, out of prison and just tryin' to go straight. There's a shifty lawyer (Sean Penn), a young punk (John Leguizmo) who he sets free and lives to regret it, colourful sidekicks (Luiz Guizman).
This doesn't get the love of Scarface but it's extremely well made. De Palma's directrion is confidence and secure - things like the final chase scene were Pacino is trying to go to the train station a la Cablanca with Guizman as Dooley Wilson and Penelope Ann Miller as Ingrid Bergman, you can feel the director having the time of his life.
Plot wise the film probably relies on Sean Penn's character being dodgy too much. I mean he pulls the big betrayal of Pacino, getting him in trouble, then also betraying him... Pacino really is a dill to no turn evidence and look after his woman. I wish a little more complexity was in his relationship with Penn.
Miller is likeable, with a memorable nude scene (it's true). Viggo Mortensen turns up. Pacino plays a super hero - tough, loyal, won't dog, sticks by his mates, is a hero in a gun fight, catnip to the ladies (the black waitress wants him), the biggest dick on the block... just overly loyal. But because we know from the opening scene he's going to die the whole film has a powerful undercurrent.
One of De Palma's best.
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