In Raising Cain, Sternhagen was at the center of what is possibly Brian De Palma's most wonderfully outrageous Steadicam shot. Entertainment Weekly's Tom Scanlon was there while they were filming:

”Cut!” director Brian De Palma calls out. ”Cut, cut, cut,” he mutters, hustling up the steps toward actress Frances Sternhagen. The stocky, salt-and-pepper-bearded De Palma is known for his on-the-set gruffness, but here he shows a softer side, gently coaxing from Sternhagen (Misery) the inflection he imagines an elderly Swiss psychologist would have while explaining how a harmless family man could harbor multiple, murderous personalities. Shooting at City Hall in Mountain View, Calif., De Palma wants Sternhagen to deliver the complex speech while following a pair of detectives through a hallway, down a flight of stairs, onto an escalator, and into an elevator, finally ending up in a basement morgue — all in one continuous shot.

The scene is almost as long as the 4-minute, 50-second Steadicam shot that opened De Palma’s last picture, The Bonfire of the Vanities (1990). But if the controversial director of Dressed to Kill, Scarface, and The Untouchables has his way, that will be the only similarity between the two films. With a lean budget ($12 million), relatively low-profile leads (John Lithgow, Lolita Davidovich, Steven Bauer), and a low-key production in the suburbs of San Francisco, Cain is not only a return to the Hitchcockian terrain where De Palma has always felt most at home but it’s also his chance to prove that he can still craft an efficient thriller.

The Cain script, which De Palma also wrote, gives him an opportunity to indulge his taste for showy plot twists and frequent nods — part homage, part send-up-to the master. And it gives Lithgow (Ricochet) the chance to let loose an entire improv troupe’s worth of kinky character studies. ”I must say, I’m great in this movie,” Lithgow chuckles. ”This is going to be mind-blowing.”

For De Palma, who had recently married Terminator producer (and James Cameron’s ex) Gale Anne Hurd, keeping the project manageable was a top priority. ”Gale was pregnant (she has since given birth to a baby girl, now 10 months old), and I wanted to do a movie that I could do very simply and that was close to home,” he says, adding that he deliberately chose locations that were near the couple’s Woodside, Calif., home. Hurd, who’s also Cain‘s producer, says, ”It’s really nice to be able to go to sleep in your own bed.”

Particularly on days like this. The long Steadicam shot requires 27 tedious takes. In the final seconds, with actors gathered around a covered body in the morgue, De Palma bellows stage directions.

”Hand!” he shouts, directing the coroner to lift the corpse’s bloody hand.

”Drop!” The hand drops back on the slab.

”Face!” The sheet is yanked back to reveal …

Interviewed by Charlie Rose in 1992, just three months after Raising Cain was released, Rose asked Sternhagen to explain what she measn when she says that she works from the outside in:

Well, it really means that I like to… I feel like John Cleese, the man of silly walks [laughs]. I like to find out how it feels to walk and talk like a character before I really start on the emotional moments. … It begins to all happen together, but in the very beginning, it starts – I love things where I have to do accents, for example. It’s a kind of limit. It’s a kind of pattern that I then can fit myself into. And I know I have a friend, for example, who has no idea that I used her in a movie. And what I loved about it was I just – it began to happen. As I read it, I started seeing how [voice trails off], and pretty soon, I found myself being tough and hard, just the way she was. And what was wonderful was that, I got a little apprehensive that she might recognize herself, she came up to me after seeing the movie and she said, “I like that character you played!” And I thought, she likes herself. She likes herself, that’s nice!

Wanting more than you need is, of course, the cornerstone of a consumption-based economy, as well as a reasonable definition of addiction. The specter of this illness arises when Elvira interrupts to tell Tony lesson number two: “Don’t get high on your own supply.” Frank, clearly annoyed, seconds this and adds, with a hard look at Elvira, “Of course, not everybody follows that rule.”

In the logic of Scarface, no one follows this rule because no one can. If Tony can be called a tragic figure, this is his hamartia, as inevitable as Oedipus marrying his mother. This is because Tony’s addiction to cocaine, modeled by Elvira, does not simply undermine his rational business acumen. Rather, it represents the very essence of business, the point of doing it in the first place: Tony sells to consumers so that he, in turn, may himself consume.

In his study of Latin American narcoliterature Drugs, Violence and Latin America, professor Joseph Patteson describes Western addiction to cocaine as a parody of capitalism—it shores up a solipsistic sense of self closed off to identification with the other and oriented towards consumption and domination, a state of affairs that leaves the addict perpetually unsatisfied. This is not due to any inherent quality of the drug itself. Indigenous peoples of South America who ingest relatively high amounts of cocaine through traditional coca chewing do not suffer from what we in the West call “addiction”. Tony, however, embodies the transformation of coca into cocaine, that is, the process of commodification under capitalism. The more he consumes, the more dissatisfied he becomes, as he systematically alienates everyone around him through his selfishness.

Frank’s final lesson, though not part of his list, is imparted when the waiter brings them a bottle of 1964 Dom Pérignon: “five hundred and fifty dollars…for a bunch a fucking grapes!” When asked how he likes it Tony responds, “Woah, that’s good, Frank!” Thus is commodity fetishism demonstrated, though not critiqued. The wine’s exchange value is based on its function as a status symbol, which also makes it taste very, very good. This lesson is put into practice when Tony makes his first major purchase, a Porsche he hopes will impress Elvira (it does), and later, as Tony steals her from Frank, kills him, and takes over his business.

The ensuing montage, cited by Márez as an allegory of the movement of narcocapital through the modern financial system, with bills riffling through counting machines and sacks of money being taken to a bank, also includes a portrayal of consumption. We see Tony marry Elvira at his new mansion, unveil a portrait of them, show guests his pet tiger, and buy his sister a designer dress. It ends with a shot of Elvira sitting in front of a mirror with a far-away look in her eyes, taking cocaine with a small spoon, sipping from an old-fashioned glass, and anxiously taking a drag from a cigarette. In the very next scene, we see Tony in his office, garishly decorated in black and gold and with a bank of CCTV screens, negotiating with the financier who launders his money as he mirrors Elvira’s consumption in a less elegant fashion, slamming down his glass, chomping a cigar and noisily snorting lines off of a mirror.

The dissatisfaction inherent to the search for the “good life” under capitalism is put front and center in Scarface‘s very next scene, which features Tony sitting in a huge jacuzzi filled with bubbles, smoking a cigar, and watching TV as Elvira does her toilette behind him and Manny, his right-hand man, attempts to convince him to talk to a new money launderer. While ranting at the news, Tony ironically criticizes the very thing that enabled his acquisition of wealth, arguing that bankers and politicians maintain drug prohibition to enrich themselves at the expense of people like him. His complaints even have a tinge of nostalgia for socialism: “You know what capitalism is? Gettin’ fucked!” Elvira responds sarcastically: “true capitalist if ever I met one.”

Though he does not have the reputation of Brad Pitt or the acclaim of Sean Penn, in the 1990s, Tim Robbins rapidly established himself as the most reliable leading man in Hollywood, equally adept as both a vulnerable audience insert and a smirking anti-hero. With his slicked-back hairdo and sizeable stature (standing at 2 meters tall), Robbins had a naturalistic watchability that made him the perfect anchor for some of the most acclaimed films of the decade and a muse for vaunted auteurs from Robert Altman to Brian De Palma.

In the 21st century, the aging Robbins has shrewdly shifted his attention to supporting roles, including one in Mystic River (2003), which earned him a much-deserved Academy Award. Recently, it has been the role of independent filmmakers to utilize most of his talents and producers at HBO, who cast Robbins as the Secretary of State in the cruelly overlooked miniseries The Brink. And then, of course, there’s his respectable output behind the camera: 1992’s Bob Roberts adapted a cult comedy caricature from Saturday Night Live into one of the finest political satires of the post-Cold War era, whereas Dead Man Walking’s musings about life on death row earned leading lady Susan Sarandon an Oscar.

This top 10 list will act as both an overview of Robbins’ decades-long contributions to American cinema and an evaluation of his finest performances to date, including stone-cold classics and underrated gems.

10. Mission to Mars (2000)

 

Mission to Mars is certainly the gutsiest film ever to take its name from a Disneyland ride. Brian De Palma‘s direction is typically virtuosic, Ennio Morricone’s score imbues the entire film with sweeping spectacle, and the cast is stacked with some of the era’s most reliable performers. The result is a film both admirable in its ambition and visual clarity but restrained in its execution due to studio interference and shoddy visual effects. Whilst Gary Sinise leads the cast, it’s Robbins who, as Commander Blake, gives the most rewarding performance with a distinctive character arc ending with the ultimate sacrifice and the movie’s most memorable scene.

As Saving Private Ryan realizes, in a story centering on the recovery of a person, the audience’s desire to see the character found is as much motivated by the search party’s likability as it is sympathy for the missing person. For all of its myriad flaws, Mission to Mars understands this, and the dynamics between the traveling space crew are fully realized, and the chemistry between the performers is palpable. Don’t be dissuaded by the poor reviews from some critics. Mission to Mars is a worthwhile revisit whose influence on subsequent sci-fi epics (The Martian in particular) is undeniable.

I just love Carlito’s Way, because it’s, for me – coming from the disco point of view – it’s actually one of the few films made after the era that could have well been made within it, if you see what I mean. There’s very few movies – and Saturday Night Fever is obviously, you know, the one that’s going to do it – and all the others that came along didn’t quite get it right, whereas Carlito’s Way got it exactly right. I do have a couple of issues with a few of the songs that are in there that are actually out of the time loop. But other than that, for me, if you’re a De Palma fan, if you’re a gangster fan, if you’re a disco fan, it is the perfect movie. And I also – I’m going to bore you to death with disco by the end of this, I’m sure – but I mean, I’ve just written my autobiography, which is called DISCOMANIA! And basically what it is, is my favorite disco movies of all time, of which Carlito’s Way is one. Why they’re important to me, what memories they spark, and the tracks in it that actually take me back to my era of the punk-disco seventies. So that’s where it’s all coming from.

Bouzereau, whose previous books include The De Palma Cut, The Cutting Room Floor, Spielberg: The First Ten Years, and Hitchcock, Piece by Piece, among several others, has been making behind-the-scenes documentaries surrounding films by De Palma, Spielberg, and countless others for decades now. He is also working on a documentary about film composer John Williams.

In The Pocket Essential Brian De Palma (2000), John Ashbrook writes about Carlito's Way, "This is De Palma's first film noir. Essentially, the noir protagonist is a character with too much past and not enough future. Redemption is only achievable with death, because only with the full payment of all outstanding debts can the books be cleared. In essence, Carlito is dead before the film begins. As he tells Kleinfeld, 'I was dead and buried and you dug me up!' Consequently, he is now living on borrowed time. He has been given a chance to undo some of the evils of his life, but he fails. His time is wasted."

As Gail says while looking at Carlito in the mirror, "I know how this dream ends, Charlie..."

Well before it turned 30, Carlito’s Way was already an anniversary picture: A reunion between Pacino, De Palma, producer Martin Bregman and Universal Pictures, almost exactly a decade after they all worked together on Scarface. (The concept of Pacino doing a Latino accent was allowed to tag along too, apparently.) Scarface’s reputation grew in stature since its respectable, unremarkable box office performance in 1983, as it became a gangster classic, an iconic Pacino vehicle and the inspiration for a number of high-profile rappers. Carlito’s Way is also probably better-regarded now than it was at the time of its original release, but though it did inspire a later direct-to-DVD prequel indicating some youth-market interest, it hasn’t reached Scarface heights of imitation, homage or (despite that great silhouette) dorm-room poster ubiquity. But it’s the better film of the two – maybe even De Palma’s best overall. The director himself seems to think so: “I can’t make a better picture than this,” he recalls thinking to himself while rewatching the movie a few months after it debuted to middling business in the U.S. (See the wonderful documentary De Palma for a candid play-by-play of this and all of his other movies.)

At the time, though, Carlito’s Way was oddly received as an awards-season also-ran, on the heels of Pacino’s recent Oscar win for Scent of a Woman, just about six months earlier. That career context provides – whether intentional or not – De Palma’s smaller-than-usual dose of meta-movie playfulness. Early in the film, Pacino’s Carlito gets a new lease on life when an evidence-tampering technicality springs him from a 30-year prison sentence after only five years. He then insists on addressing the courtroom, talking about how he’s been vindicated by the law, with a hamminess not too far removed from his climactic Scent of a Woman grandstanding. As if to point out the artifice of this performance, the visibly irritated judge tells him to cut it out: “You’re not accepting an award,” he says, though the last time much of the audience had seen Pacino, he was doing just that. Carlito is undeterred and continues his speech.

If that’s an in-joke, it’s an outlier. Apart from one other seeming wink at the audience, when another character informs Carlito that he could pass for Italian (some might say more readily than he could pass for Puerto Rican or Cuban!), the movie finds both Pacino and De Palma in a more reflective mood. Carlito really does want to use his second chance to go straight, earn enough money to buy into a car-rental business a friend runs in the Bahamas, and leave 1970s New York City behind. It turns out that his ticket out of prison is also his ticket back into the life he no longer wants: His lawyer Dave Kleinfeld (Sean Penn) gets him a job running a club, but then eventually Dave needs a big favor, and the movie’s final 45 minutes kick into gear with sweaty, inexorably mounting tension.

If the movie often avoids the operatic grandeur of Scarface — no “World Is Yours” blimp, no coke mountain, no opulent bubble bath – Carlito’s Way also feels less constrained by its own story. “Constrained” might seem like an odd descriptor for a movie as sprawling as Scarface, but once Tony Montana scraps his way to a place in the drug trade, the less overt desperation slackens the movie, which turns repetitive before its big memorable finale. (Michelle Pfeiffer’s Elvira, Tony’s wife, memorably complains about both his obsession with money and his default “fuck”-laden mode of expression, as if to anticipate complaints about the movie itself.) In the earlier film, De Palma doesn’t always seem especially fascinated by the ins and outs of criminal activity (certainly not with the hopped-up attention of his pal Martin Scorsese), maybe because there isn’t an explicit voyeur figure whose point of view he can readily identify with.

Carlito, on the other hand, is a quieter, more observant character, narrating his own story with a weariness Pacino would tease out further in future roles. Also: Isn’t a guy attempting to bluff his way out of a tight corner, as in that early shoot-out, actually more compelling than the guy who, waiting for attackers behind a door and hollering threats, actually does have a gigantic-ass loaded machine gun at his disposal? The beginning of that Carlito’s Way sequence, where Carlito notices that something is amiss when his young cousin drags him along on a money drop, generates its suspense from the way De Palma makes his camera an extension of Pacino’s subtle wariness. Similarly, an extended chase sequence late in the film that moves from a subway car to Grand Central Station, delays its carnage until the very end; much of it involves watching Pacino run, hide and think on his feet, in a series of long takes that don’t flinch away from the walls closing in on him.

Elsewhere in the film, there are moments where the star turns up his volume knob, going from Pacino to PACINO, but like that courtroom scene and that big trailer line, they tend to be instances of Carlito performing toward his (legitimate) tough-guy image. When they’re not – when he’s arguing with Gail (Penelope Ann Miller), the ex-girlfriend he looks up post-incarceration, or confronting Penn’s maddening Kleinfeld – the fireworks are chased with a sense of palpable despair. De Palma seems to key into that contrast between an ex-gangster’s street-level reputation and private doubts, and the setpiece scrapes Carlito gets into feel more dangerous as a result. De Palma can still direct the hell out of a juicy stalking scene – Kleinfeld has a miniature doozy after the mob realizes he’s ripped them off and killed a made guy – without relying on the addictive dream logic of his more id-like, movie-drunk thrillers.

If that occasionally leaves Carlito’s Way moving at a leisurely pace compared to the spring-loaded craziness of Body Double or Dressed to Kill, well, it’s still 20-something minutes shorter than Scarface, and a lot more soulful. Typically when De Palma returns to certain motifs, they crackle with knowing wit. (I recall, as I often do, the satisfied laughter of a crowd at New York Film Festival beholding Passion when someone brings up the idea of identical twins, as if to say: Finally!) Carlito’s Way has plenty of familiar bits: The questionable loyalty to an unstable friend who the hero “owes,” a one-last-job-then-I’m-out proposition, the doomed romanticism of the reformed criminal who can’t fully extricate himself from that life. Yet the movie feels genuinely poignant, even – or especially – when it feels like it’s echoing Scarface: The wall-sized images of paradise seen in the earlier film are shrunk down to a little subway ad that captures Carlito’s attention in his final moments. Though Carlito’s Way doesn’t need Scarface to work as a piece of top-notch entertainment, it does feel grander and more accomplished in that better-loved movie’s shadow. De Palma’s masterful flourishes are also, in the end, easing us out of the stylish fugue created by larger-than-life images of gangsters. Tony Montana goes out in a blaze of glory – he dies big time. Carlito Brigante only wants to slip away.