Al Pacino was working out at a New York City YMCA when he met New York state supreme court Judge Edwin Torres, the writer of Carlito’s Way and After Hours, the books this movie is based on. He’d tried several times to make a film version — even facing a 1989 lawsuit where he went back on his agreement to make the movie with Brando as lawyer David Kleinfeld — and screenwriter David Koepp and producer Martin Bregman to develop the shooting script for this movie, one that Pacino felt would work for himself.

Brian De Palma didn’t want to make another Scarface, but that’s exactly what critics said, saying that he was going back to that movie and The Untouchables.

How could they watch the train sequence that closes the film and see Pacino’s character stare at the billboard and have it come to life with the love of his life, Gail (Penelope Ann Miller) dancing as he drifts off and not be in love with all that is cinema?

Five years in on a three decade jail sentence, Carlito Brigante (Pacino) gets out thanks to a technicality found by his friend and lawyer, Dave Kleinfeld (Sean Penn). He tries to follow the straight and narrow, but follows his cousin Guajiro (John Augstin Ortiz) on a drug deal that goes wrong. The young man is killed, but the $30,000 from the crime allows Carlito to buy into a nightclub and save up for retirement in the Caribbean.

From his interactions with Benny Blanco from the Bronx (John Leguizamo) to trying to win back over Gail and the prison break to try and get Tony Taglialucci out of Riker’s, this is a movie of Carlito torn between wanting to escape this life of violence and blood yet always getting pulled back in.

Despite wanting to distance this movie from Scarface, the nightclub is called El Paraíso which is the same name as the food stand that Tony Montana worked at.

The Arrow Video 4K UHD release of Carlito’s Way has limited edition packaging with reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Obviously Creative, as well as a double-sided fold-out poster featuring newly commissioned artwork by Tom Ralston and Obviously Creative.

Beyond all that, it has seven double-sided, postcard-sized lobby card reproductions and an illustrated collector’s booklet featuring new writing on the film by Barry Forshaw and original production notes.

There are also two new audio commentaries, one by Matt Zoller Seitz, author of The Wes Anderson Collection and The Soprano Sessions, and the other by Dr. Douglas Keesey, author of Brian De Palma’s Split-Screen: A Life in Film.

Want more? This also has interviews with Judge Edwin Torres, author of the novels Carlito’s Way and After Hours on which the screenplay for Carlito’s Way is based and editors Bill Pankow and Kristina Boden. There’s an appreciation of the movie by film critic David Edelstein, a look at the film’s locations, an archival interview with Brian DePalma and the making of doc that was on the original DVD. Plus deleted scenes, a promotional feature, the theatrical teaser and trailer, and an image gallery. Woah!

You can get this from MVD.