Scarface ««««
R, 170m. 1983
Cast & Credits: Al Pacino (Tony Montana), Steven Bauer (Manny Ribera), Michelle Pfeiffer (Elvira Hancock), Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio (Gina Montana), Robert Loggia (Frank Lopez), Miriam Colon (Mama Montana), F. Murray Abraham (Omar Suarez), Paul Shenar (Alejandro Sosa), Harris Yulin (Mel Bernstein). Screenplay by Oliver Stone based on the 1932 screenplay by Ben Hecht and Howard Hawks. Directed by Brian De Palma.
Scarface is an explosive rags-to-riches story combining cold and often times, unexpectedly brutal moments of action, drama, suspense, tragedy and even comedy.
Based on a 1932 mobster classic of the same name, the film traces the ambitiously meteoric rise and fall of Tony Montana, a Cuban exile and criminal, unforgettably played by Al Pacino, who lives out his American dream on the sun baked shores of Miami as Florida’s cocaine kingpin.
You’ll note I said this notoriously violent, foul-mouthed epic boasts comedic moments. Well, it is humorous in parts even if scriptwriter turned director Oliver Stone (JFK - 1991) and director Brian De Palma (Mission to Mars - 2000) didn’t intend it to be. I found it not so much the lines the characters say that were funny as much as their actions and reactions.
Take for example, an early scene where Tony’s new crimelord boss (Robert Loggia) asks Elvira (Michelle Pfeiffer), his beautiful long-legged, coke addicted blond who would want to assassinate him. The elder druglord laughably says he is surrounded by no one but friends. Everyone is laughing except Montana. You know something is wrong when Tony remarks that the hit Lopez ordered him to carry out was "fun."
Then there is the odd way Montana spends his hard earned money buying a convertible with leopard skin interior, calling the vehicle a "creampuff", and develops a newfound infatuation for tigers so much that he vows to one day buy one.
"You buy a tiger you won't have any friends left, not that you have any now," says Montana's best friend, Manny (Steven Bauer) who provides some of the epic's offbeat moments of comic relief.
Seeing the film again reminds one of director De Palma's love of revolving camera movements; a technique he's incorporated in several previous projects of his. One scene in Scarface that demonstrates this best is the much talked-about chainsaw sequence early on. The camera pans in on the television as a hand is seen turning the volume up in hopes no one hears the screams coming from the person being hacked to death in the bathroom.
The camera makes its way outside the room to the street peering down on Montana's henchmen who busily flirt with Miami's bikini, tan clad women instead of keeping watch upstairs before taking us back, yet again, to the original scene inside the hotel room. The shot is a perfect balance between the shock of what's to come next and comedy like as though DePalma is giving us a chance to prepare for the inevitable.
Pacino’s character is a concoction of every raw emotion you can think of except happiness. You never know how he is going to react. When immigration officials doubt his answers, the Cuban immigrant goes off on a tirade talking about communism and why he left Castro’s country.
When a Columbian drug czar questions his loyalty, Montana talks about how the only things he has in this world are his "balls and his word" and he won’t break them for no one. Put him in the same nightclub where his kid sister, Gina (Mary Elizabeth Mastrontonio), is dancing with another guy and Tony becomes a jealous ticking time bomb ready to go off. Threaten him with war and he'll become so enraged that he can’t get a firm grip on the speaker phone he is talking to. When bored with life, he’ll turn to the mountain of cocaine sitting on top of his desk to powder his nose until the time comes for the next fix.
The most pathetic are those moments like the nightclub scene where the much-feared hitman sits in a booth all alone, brooding, lazily smoking a cigar while everyone else is beside themselves laughing as comedian Richard Belzer tells jokes on stage.
"You ought to smile more," a DEA agent tells Tony at one point. "Remember every day above ground is a good day."
Scenes like this and numerous others brought to mind the one quote never once uttered in Scarface, "It's lonely at the top." The film’s message is here is a guy who gets everything he wants, albeit illegally, but never once takes the time out to enjoy it.
Like Blade Runner (1982) and The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975), two pictures that got greeted with little fanfare when they debuted at theaters but have since risen to cult status over the years thanks to video, Scarface has also generated a faithful following as well since its premiere twenty years ago. Rap groups have written songs about the film while others quote memorable dialogue. Not the four letter words, mind you but phrases like "Don't get high on your own supply," "Nothing exceeds like excess" and "Say goodnight to the bad guy."
In the two decades since its theatrical debut, much has been made about the picture’s violence that notably includes the infamous chainsaw scene as well as the chronic use of the four letter "F" word which according to IMDB.com, was uttered 208 times. Those of you who are interested in uselessly pointless trivia that is.
The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) threatened the film at the time with an X rating unless De Palma make cuts to certain scenes back in '83 but was awarded an R upon release. (The MPAA altered its movie rating system in the 1990s and changed the X rating to NC-17.)
The fact is the violence in Scarface is no more shocking than seeing James Caan’s Sonny Corleone being riddled with bullets or waking up to find a bloodied horse’s head in one’s bed like in The Godfather (1972). The business the characters are a part of in Scarface is the kind Marlon Brando’s Don Corleone warned about in The Godfather. They are cold-blooded killers - ruthless, uneducated, with barely a conscience, if at all, who would murder an opposing politician's wife and children as a warning to those who speak out against them.
As for the language, I have yet to meet someone who all he or she does when they see a movie is count how many times the F word is uttered. And I hope I never do.
Composer Giorgio Moroder (Flashdance - 1983 , Electric Dreams - 1984) enhances some of the picture’s most haunting images through his moody, slow moving musical score; my favorite being when Tony watches the Goodyear blimp flying in the early morning skies promoting the message, "The world is yours."
There is a reason Scarface still endures as one of the most popular yet critically unappreciated and in some cases, reviled gangster films twenty years later. That is because since 1983, other than the Oscar winning film, Traffic (2000), which chronicled America’s ongoing war with the illegal drug trade and television’s Miami Vice (1984-1990), there haven’t been any movies about the drug underworld that have stuck out from all the others. At least none I can think of.
There is something ironic in the scene when Montana tells a party of dinner guests that he is the last bad guy they will ever see. Movies have conjured up lots of memorable villains since the invention of film, but when it comes to gangsters, next to The Godfather’s Michael Corleone, another mob role Pacino clearly made his own, there has never been a crime lord as frighteningly memorable nor as tragic as Tony Montana.
©9/17/03
R, 170m. 1983
Cast & Credits: Al Pacino (Tony Montana), Steven Bauer (Manny Ribera), Michelle Pfeiffer (Elvira Hancock), Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio (Gina Montana), Robert Loggia (Frank Lopez), Miriam Colon (Mama Montana), F. Murray Abraham (Omar Suarez), Paul Shenar (Alejandro Sosa), Harris Yulin (Mel Bernstein). Screenplay by Oliver Stone based on the 1932 screenplay by Ben Hecht and Howard Hawks. Directed by Brian De Palma.
Based on a 1932 mobster classic of the same name, the film traces the ambitiously meteoric rise and fall of Tony Montana, a Cuban exile and criminal, unforgettably played by Al Pacino, who lives out his American dream on the sun baked shores of Miami as Florida’s cocaine kingpin.
You’ll note I said this notoriously violent, foul-mouthed epic boasts comedic moments. Well, it is humorous in parts even if scriptwriter turned director Oliver Stone (JFK - 1991) and director Brian De Palma (Mission to Mars - 2000) didn’t intend it to be. I found it not so much the lines the characters say that were funny as much as their actions and reactions.
Take for example, an early scene where Tony’s new crimelord boss (Robert Loggia) asks Elvira (Michelle Pfeiffer), his beautiful long-legged, coke addicted blond who would want to assassinate him. The elder druglord laughably says he is surrounded by no one but friends. Everyone is laughing except Montana. You know something is wrong when Tony remarks that the hit Lopez ordered him to carry out was "fun."
Then there is the odd way Montana spends his hard earned money buying a convertible with leopard skin interior, calling the vehicle a "creampuff", and develops a newfound infatuation for tigers so much that he vows to one day buy one.
"You buy a tiger you won't have any friends left, not that you have any now," says Montana's best friend, Manny (Steven Bauer) who provides some of the epic's offbeat moments of comic relief.
Seeing the film again reminds one of director De Palma's love of revolving camera movements; a technique he's incorporated in several previous projects of his. One scene in Scarface that demonstrates this best is the much talked-about chainsaw sequence early on. The camera pans in on the television as a hand is seen turning the volume up in hopes no one hears the screams coming from the person being hacked to death in the bathroom.
The camera makes its way outside the room to the street peering down on Montana's henchmen who busily flirt with Miami's bikini, tan clad women instead of keeping watch upstairs before taking us back, yet again, to the original scene inside the hotel room. The shot is a perfect balance between the shock of what's to come next and comedy like as though DePalma is giving us a chance to prepare for the inevitable.
Pacino’s character is a concoction of every raw emotion you can think of except happiness. You never know how he is going to react. When immigration officials doubt his answers, the Cuban immigrant goes off on a tirade talking about communism and why he left Castro’s country.
When a Columbian drug czar questions his loyalty, Montana talks about how the only things he has in this world are his "balls and his word" and he won’t break them for no one. Put him in the same nightclub where his kid sister, Gina (Mary Elizabeth Mastrontonio), is dancing with another guy and Tony becomes a jealous ticking time bomb ready to go off. Threaten him with war and he'll become so enraged that he can’t get a firm grip on the speaker phone he is talking to. When bored with life, he’ll turn to the mountain of cocaine sitting on top of his desk to powder his nose until the time comes for the next fix.
The most pathetic are those moments like the nightclub scene where the much-feared hitman sits in a booth all alone, brooding, lazily smoking a cigar while everyone else is beside themselves laughing as comedian Richard Belzer tells jokes on stage.
"You ought to smile more," a DEA agent tells Tony at one point. "Remember every day above ground is a good day."
Scenes like this and numerous others brought to mind the one quote never once uttered in Scarface, "It's lonely at the top." The film’s message is here is a guy who gets everything he wants, albeit illegally, but never once takes the time out to enjoy it.
Like Blade Runner (1982) and The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975), two pictures that got greeted with little fanfare when they debuted at theaters but have since risen to cult status over the years thanks to video, Scarface has also generated a faithful following as well since its premiere twenty years ago. Rap groups have written songs about the film while others quote memorable dialogue. Not the four letter words, mind you but phrases like "Don't get high on your own supply," "Nothing exceeds like excess" and "Say goodnight to the bad guy."
In the two decades since its theatrical debut, much has been made about the picture’s violence that notably includes the infamous chainsaw scene as well as the chronic use of the four letter "F" word which according to IMDB.com, was uttered 208 times. Those of you who are interested in uselessly pointless trivia that is.
The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) threatened the film at the time with an X rating unless De Palma make cuts to certain scenes back in '83 but was awarded an R upon release. (The MPAA altered its movie rating system in the 1990s and changed the X rating to NC-17.)
The fact is the violence in Scarface is no more shocking than seeing James Caan’s Sonny Corleone being riddled with bullets or waking up to find a bloodied horse’s head in one’s bed like in The Godfather (1972). The business the characters are a part of in Scarface is the kind Marlon Brando’s Don Corleone warned about in The Godfather. They are cold-blooded killers - ruthless, uneducated, with barely a conscience, if at all, who would murder an opposing politician's wife and children as a warning to those who speak out against them.
As for the language, I have yet to meet someone who all he or she does when they see a movie is count how many times the F word is uttered. And I hope I never do.
Composer Giorgio Moroder (Flashdance - 1983 , Electric Dreams - 1984) enhances some of the picture’s most haunting images through his moody, slow moving musical score; my favorite being when Tony watches the Goodyear blimp flying in the early morning skies promoting the message, "The world is yours."
There is a reason Scarface still endures as one of the most popular yet critically unappreciated and in some cases, reviled gangster films twenty years later. That is because since 1983, other than the Oscar winning film, Traffic (2000), which chronicled America’s ongoing war with the illegal drug trade and television’s Miami Vice (1984-1990), there haven’t been any movies about the drug underworld that have stuck out from all the others. At least none I can think of.
There is something ironic in the scene when Montana tells a party of dinner guests that he is the last bad guy they will ever see. Movies have conjured up lots of memorable villains since the invention of film, but when it comes to gangsters, next to The Godfather’s Michael Corleone, another mob role Pacino clearly made his own, there has never been a crime lord as frighteningly memorable nor as tragic as Tony Montana.
©9/17/03
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