Scarface (1983)

This isn’t just a movie — it’s a rite of passage. You don’t watch Scarface — you absorb it through cultural osmosis, rap lyrics, GTA Vice City missions, and Michael Bolton ballads you weren’t emotionally prepared for.Tony Montana didn’t climb to the top — he snorted the damn mountain, slapped fate in the face, and dared you to look away. He wasn’t a hero. He was a cockroach — self-declared. And that’s why the real ones never let him go.You think it’s overdone until you hear “The World Is Yours” and get goosebumps. You think it’s dated until Cartman yells the same lines with KFC chicken grease on his face. You think it’s too much — then remember half of modern cinema, rap, and video games took notes and built their empires on Tony’s ashes.This movie raised a generation of keyboard gangsters, mixtape moguls, and yes — roach disciples.And me? I’m not immune.5 stars.No regrets.Mic drop — onto a mirrored table.

Love this film.

SCARFACE is Brian DePalma's and Al Pacino's operatic masterful retelling of Howard Hughes', Howard Hawks' and Paul Muni's definitive 1932 gangster film of the same name. First panned upon its 1983 release, like it's predecessor and namesake SCARFACE has become a part of the American cultural consciousness far beyond itself.Pacino plays Marielito Tony Montana, a small-time stickup artist in Castro's Cuba who becomes a major drug kingpin in 1980s Miami. Pacino's Montana is reminiscent both of Muni's character and of his own portrayal of Michael Corleone. In Montana, Pacino shows us the twisted inner workings of the criminal personality he presented so convincingly as THE GODFATHER.Pacino gives us an intentionally over-the-top performance, using a theatrically "theek" Cuban accent and unremitting obscenities (estimated as one every thirty eight seconds on average) as the foundation stones for Tony Montana. Much of Pacino's characterization depends on black comedy (Tony's beloved bright yellow Cadillac with the tiger stripe interior is ridiculous to the point of screaming laughter, as is his bloodthirsty earnest buffoonery---after killing two men in cold blood he casually offers his third intended victim a job: "Okay! You call me tomorrow!") Pacino's humor hits its high point when he mutters miserably, "I don't trust Mob guys," while lighting a Corona in unconscious flattery of Vito Corleone. Scarface is very intentionally the id of the more calculating Don Michael.DePalma, through scriptwriter Oliver Stone, manages to penetrate to the heart of darkness of the cocaine subculture. Surrounded by metric tons of cocaine, warehouses full of money, and all the trash it can buy, Montana values only three people in the world, his sister Gina (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio) and his friends Angel and Manolo (Steven Bauer), one of whom he kills himself and two of whom die through his indirect machinations.When Angel dies in a gruesome chainsaw scene as brilliantly conceived and executed as Janet Leigh's shower scene in PSYCHO, a classic of directorial misdirection, Tony's humanity all but dies, and he rampages through Miami's drug underworld, butchering his rival, Frank Lopez (Robert Loggia), stealing Lopez's vicious, sexy llello-emaciated wife, Elvira (Michelle Pfeiffer), and burying himself alive in a lust of grotesque materialism. For just a moment the world is his.Pacino captures Montana's colorful rise and his robotic downfall perfectly, showing us that Tony Montana is a spiritually dead character. Although he fights to protect Gina and idolizes her throughout the film, his lifestyle of excess eventually claims her, as unable to grasp the thought of love as opposed to sheer possession, Tony kills Manolo when he discovers them together. (The two had secretly married and planned to surprise Tony).DePalma also uses the tropical motifs of Miami in a subtle way to mark Tony Montana's rise and fall. Starting out as a wisecracking second-story man addicted to Hawaiian shirts and jeans he later graduates to neon technopop polyester leisure suits in pastel colors and then finally to dark black pinstripes. The further he descends into evil the more conservative and less bright he appears.Pacino's Montana ends his depraved existence with his face buried in a mound of cocaine, and firing a grenade rifle at men come to kill him for botching an assassination---ironically, Tony is to die for not killing the children of an important politician. In the end, this flicker of compassion can't redeem him.The Special Edition second disc has some fascinating material comparing and contrasting the two SCARFACEs, and exploring much of the underpinning of this gangster classic. One of the more interesting segments is a hip-hop exploration of the film, which has become a kind of bible for 'gangsta' rappers. To see Tony Montana lauded as "a man of principle," "loyal to his friends" and a man who "has it all" is an incredible expose of the mindset of the rap contributors to the segment, since Tony Montana is none of the above, except in the most meaningless of ways.Although SCARFACE has its uneven moments and Tony's rise is far more fascinating than his inevitable fall, this movie is far better than its initial weak press reviews indicated. SCARFACE is a true classic and time-capsule piece of the Miami drug scene. Once again, Al Pacino is being, not acting onscreen, and the results are nothing short of amazing.

this is one of my favorite movies ever and i have another copy but just wanted a gold edition

Very interesting movie to watch.

Brian de Palma stormed my heart back in the mid-seventies when he released Phantom of the Paradise. That unforgettable film represented exactly the kind of feverish extravaganza that I wanted to see at that time of my life. Phantom was blatantly absurd, a movie that could be enjoyed only by moviegoers who accepted that it was intentionally unbelievable, a blatantly absurd, feverish and surreal dream made with passion and conviction.It is a long journey from the risky, outside mood of Phantom to this mainstream video with its blatant appeal to the American moviegoers craving for fare that offers unadulterated visions of money, violence and sex. Nevertheless, I always enjoy watching this movie.Perhaps Scarface can't be fully appreciated unless you have first seen Phantom of the Paradise. From the swirling camerawork in Al Pacino's crazed and brilliant opening scene through the Tarantino-topping violence of the final shootout, everything in this movie pushes us beyond the place where we can sit back in dispassionate comfort. The point here is that no decent person can sit through this movie without feeling uncomfortable. A naïve viewer might think this is simply an exceptionally wild violence and sexual ridden romp, but the point here is that every scene in this movie is calculated to take matters to extremes, to push beyond the boundaries of the real world.Tarantino and Oliver Stone get the credit for making movies that intentionally court a surreal degree of violence -- in Tarantino's case for the fun of it, and in Stone's case as a protest against the American obsession with destruction. Yet this movie shows that de Palma was there well before them. Like Natural Born Killers or the Kill Bill movies, the camera never sits still in this movie, and the violence is intentionally taken into an unreal realm of the imagination. Egregious consumption, egregious violence, and a disturbing sexual ambiance are captured by de Palma's careening camera and thrust in the viewer's face, making us squirm in our seats, unable to turn away from what simultaneously repulses and fascinates us.Personally, I don't think there is any need to make this movie again. De Palma got out in front of his audience and made a movie that was panned when it shipped, but which neither audiences nor critics have been able to ignore since. In many ways, Scarface makes both Natural Born Killers and the Kill Bill movies redundant, mere remakes of what de Palma laid down in the mid-eighties.The dark side of America is captured on the screen by this extravagant production that left me stunned when I first saw it, back when I was much younger and my blood ran much hotter than it does today. Al Pacino gives an exalted performance that is simultaneously absurd and brilliant. The same is true of de Palma, who dazzles us while eliciting gasps of laughter and shock while pushing us beyond our tolerance for any number of things. To say that this film is too violent, too sexual and too hard too believe is only to reiterate de Palma's purpose in making this production. Watch this movie when you have a craving for the extreme, when you want to analyze how a talented director performs sleight of hand effects, and when you want to see the movie that lay the groundwork for the careers of contemporary directors like Tarentino. Watch this movie when you want to contemplate the dark side of America, when you want to watch an actor go the distance and then travel half as far again just for the heck of it, and watch this movie if you are willing to let your demons out to dance. Just don't watch this movie if you want to take it literally as a Hollywood entertainment.This is a movie about bad people doing very bad and very destructive things. It is so egregious, that I'm sure it had the opposite effect that its critics suppose. Young people who saw this movie while growing up probably left the theatre or TV screen convinced that nothing is crazier than taking drugs and running around on your wife. But to ascribe a moral purpose to the movie is to undermine its fundamentally anarchic spirit. Go back to Phantom of the Paradise if you want to understand the movie. The point is that it takes conventional movie ideas and pushes them beyond the extreme and into the absurd.