Since in the original Carlito's Way Al Pacino narrated the whole thing in flashback from his death gurney, it would not be possible to do a sequel and outside of Michael Corleone, Al Pacino just don't do sequels. So young television actor Jay Hernandez was given a shot at a prequel film, Carlito's Way: The Rise To Power.

It was hoped that this film would make Jay Hernandez a major star. Sad to say that didn't happen, through no fault of Hernandez. He is a most charismatic young man and hopefully will get a second big break.

What Pacino did in the first Carlito's Way was create a portrait of an aging Latino gangster who would just like to live without any more hassles. But as one of his other creations, the aforementioned Michael Corleone said, they keep dragging me back in.

Hernandez doesn't inherit a family tradition like Michael Corleone, he's a street kid from East Harlem and was caught in first the social welfare system after losing his parents and then the criminal justice system after some street crimes. In prison he meets up with Michael Kelly and Mario Van Peebles and in the spirit of the new times forms an alliance with a black man and an Italian man to carve out Spanish Harlem as his heroin turf and to have two allies available to deal with the black and Italian gangsters on the scene.

Actually the performance that caught my attention was that of Mtume Gant who plays Van Peebles younger brother. Gant is inflamed by all the revolutionary rhetoric of the Sixties and Seventies, but in actuality just proves to be a punk.

In the original Carlito's Way, Sean Penn had a major role as a criminal defense lawyer who decides to go in business for himself as a gangster. I was so hoping to see a younger version of his character in Rise To Power.

From what Pacino did in the original, Rise To Power turned out to be nothing more than a routine gangster drama. I hope Jay gets a second break.

In the racially divided East Harlem in the late 60s, three prison buddies Puerto Rican Carlito Brigante (Jay Hernandez),the Afro-American Earl (Mario Van Peebles) and the Italian Rocco (Michael Kelly) bridge the divide. They import heroin, and does a deal with Italian mob boss Artie Badalato Sr (Burt Young). They negotiate a truce with Hollywood Nicky (Sean Combs) who runs the black area. Carlito hounds coat-check girl Leticia (Jaclyn DeSantis) until she falls for him. Earl wants to quit leaving his part to his younger brother Reggie (Mtume Gant). Only Reggie causes one problem after another.

This is what happens when a producer thinks that he could do the job. Michael Bregman took the Edwin Torres novel and made the movie himself. It's a poor amateurish effort. There are some interesting actors involved. I'm sure a lot of them got pulled in by the title. However that's all we have here. The production looks so poor. Any money spent is wasted with this badly directed movie. The only truly interesting character is Reggie because he is such an annoying punk. His unrelenting superiority attitude is actually fascinating. Otherwise there isn't much interesting here. This material deserves better.

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.