Captivating movie !

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Carlito Way, the original is a brilliant story about an ex-drug dealer who hopes to leave his criminal past and so he invests in a club and the deals with the trouble that comes with it.This film was....I saw the trailer and knew instantly it was going to be bad..But after dismissing films in the past and finding out they were great( Lucky Number Slevin, Tokyo Drift)...I gave this a shot and it failed within the first five minutes...The script is something a teenager would come up with if given five minutes to prepare...It was weak, with weaker dialogue. It seems there is an instant need for romance in a gangster movie. So Brigante decides to beat a guy up for the girl....and she say's 'Yes!' And if you need to act bad just throw racism around...As we learn from the 'Italian mobsters'...The acting was terrible to say the least...I found 'Hollywood Nicky', hilarious.I absolutely hate all these musicians turning to movies. Lets face it the only reason P Diddy did this movie was so he could play a gangsters...The actress who plays Leticia was weak but beautiful. The sex scene was weak but we got to see her..which was okay...But overall I expected it shed light on how Carito ended up in prison and the love of his life...And the assassin towards the end completely added to the horrendous movie that is...Carlito's Way: Rise to Power..

This was just a terrible movie. It hurt me to watch it. Almost every action was unmotivated within the context of the movie, the acting was really poor (P.Diddy was the best actor which really says something about the movie) and the plot was generally predictable. Some links to Carlito's Way were okay, for example his dream of one day moving to the Carribien, but on the whole they were weak. The love interest in my opinion was flat out wrong but hey that's debatable. Anyways I really wasn't expecting much before watching the movie and I guess you could say even those expectations weren't met. I feel bad for Jay Hernandez because he actually is a decent actor (Friday Night Lights). He's lucky though because I'm sure there won't be too many people watching this movie. I generally give movies a decent rating if they spark my interest at all so I'm gonna go ahead and give this one two stars. Better luck next time. And yes I did enjoy Carlito's Way.

I really loved this movie and it was way better then the last one.I really liked how they had Chuck Zito in this one, he was in the last one as well but was not really shown where with this one they showed him a lot.I like how this one played out way better then the first one and Carlito was way hotter then the last guy.I do not really like how they put Sean Combs in it because to me he has no talent and not to mention I do not even remember any blacks being in the first one so it made no sense to put them in this one.I would have to say if this movie did not have Sean Combs in it I would give it a 10 instead of an 8.

This movie had potential and I was willing to give it a try but there are so many timeline problems that are so obvious - it's hard to swallow being treated like such an idiot.Rise to Power is set in the late sixties. Carlito's Way is set in the mid to late seventies. For this movie to be realistic, it would have to be set in the fifties, if not the late forties.Rise to Power has no sign of Gail (Pennelope Ann Miller), no sign of Kleinfeld, no sign of Rolando that Carlito supposedly ran with in his "hey-day". None of the primary characters in the original film were in this movie. We're supposed to believe that Carlito met all these people in the span of a few years.Rise to Power ends with Carlito walking down the beach talking about retiring in paradise which is what he wanted to do in the original film. Also, the pre-quel creates the Rocco and Earl characters - what's supposed to happen with them since they are clearly not in Carlito's Way? It's also hard to understand how Carlito could have the relationship with the Italians he has in the original film watching the events of Rise to Power. Where are the Taglialucci's in this film? There is probably seven years between the two films and he spends five of them in prison. It's like trying to put a square plug into a round hole.It is obvious that no one was interested in telling a good story and that they were more interested in making some bucks by making an average gangster film and throwing a character called Carlito Brigante into the story. The film had some good moments but I think they would have been better off leaving this movie to stand by itself instead of trying to make it a prequel to Carlito's Way.If you feel determined to see this movie, the only advice I can give is to not think of the movie as a linear pre-quel. Think of it like the spaghetti westerns with Clint Eastwood's man with no name, in other words two movies that have the same character but aren't necessarily connected with each other.