Carlito's agency is the tragedy. He keeps making choices to go straight — refusing deals, walking away from fights, saving the money, loving Gail — and each choice gets undermined by a world that won't let him leave. Agency stays high throughout because Carlito is ALWAYS choosing: choosing the club over the street, choosing mercy over murder, choosing loyalty over self-preservation. But control declines steadily because every good choice has a bad consequence. The cruelest gap is at the end: agency peaks at beat 38 (escalator victory, train platform reached, escape earned through his own competence) while control is still in single digits — and then Benny Blanco closes both to zero.