OK time for another movie review, this time its another action classic from the 1980s, which is Brian De Palma's Scarface, starring Al Pacino as a Cuban refugee who makes it big in the world of crime in America. And with that let's have a look at the plot....
Right well the film is set in 1980, and the film's main character, Tony Montana (Al Pacino) is a Cuban refugee who arrives in America during the Mariel boatlift (which was a real life mass emigration of Cubans into the US). Tony along with his best friend Manny Ribera (Steven Bauer) are sent to "Freedom camp" which is refugee camp. After a while Manny tells Tony the news that they can recieve green cards if in return that Tony does a hit on a Cuban government official, on behalf of a drug kingpin Frank Lopez (Robert Loggia), which Tony does. On the outside, Tony and Manny are offered a deal from Frank's henchman, Omar Suarez (F. Murray Abraham) to buy cocaine from Colombian drug dealers. However the deal itself goes sour, as Tonny and one of his crew, Angel, are captured by the Colombians, and Angel is killed by a chainsaw, but before Tony suffers the same fate, Manny bursts in and rescues him. Tony then kills the Colombian who nearly chainsawed him, and takes the money from the deal, and then contacts Suarez and defiantly tells him that he will take the money to Frank himself. Frank on meeting Tony is impressed by him and he decides to hire him and Manny to work for him. Tony also meets Frank's girlfriend, Elvira (Michelle Pfieffer) who is stuck up and cold in manner, but Tony falls for her instantly.
Months later Tony reunites with his family, his mother Georgina (Miriam Colon) and his beautiful younger sister, Gina (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio) who Tony is very protective off. Tony's mother however is far from pleased to see him and refuses to take his money, after which Tony leaves angrily, and Gina goes out after him, and Tony gives her the money anyway. Manny clearly smitten by Gina, is warned by Tony to stay away from her. Some time after this Frank sends Tony along with Suarez to meet with cocaine kingpin Aljeandro Sosa (Paul Shenar) where Tony does a deal with Sosa without Frank's consent, which angers Suarez, but Sosa allows Suarez to call Frank before they move on. However Sosa soon reveals to Tony that Suarez is a police informant, and he shows Tony that his men have Suarez up in a helicopter, beaten up with a rope around his neck, they hang him from the helicopter. Sosa despite his dislike for Frank, admires Tony's honesty and fortright nature and decides to the deal with Tony.
Tony returns to Frank with the news of the deal, who is outraged and tells Tony that to stall the deal for now, but soon after their partnership falls apart. Tony later on at a nightclub is shaken down by a corrupt cop Mel Bernstein (Harris Yulin) who proposes to tax him in return for inside police information and protection. Tony also tries to come onto Elvira, while Frank is present, who angrily tells him to leave, but Tony instead says "the only thing that gives orders in this world is balls!" and Frank leaves. Not longer after thought an attempt is made on Tony's life in the club, who barely escapes, killing the hitmen in the process. Tony then get's Manny and his men together, and they soon confront Frank at his office, who confesses to have ordered the hit on him, and pleads with him to spare his life, but Tony has Manny shoot Frank dead, and Tony kills Bernstein who is also present. With nothing in his way, Tony takes over Frank's business and also takes Elvira with him, and he soon rises in power and partners with Sosa on his drug deals, turning his business in a multi-million dollar empire. But from here Tony's life becomes increasingly complicated and its not long before events in his career and personal life spiral wildly out of control.
(PLOT STUFF OVER)
While it can be said to be a remake of the 1932 film of the same name, there is not a great deal of similarity between the two films, and for De Palma's Scarface is the more memorable and relevant of the two films, as it mirrored the real life events of the time as a result of the Cuban mass immigration, and the political and social repercussions as a result in America. Character wise the film is also brilliantly written and Tony Montana is a memorable antagonist with a complex background, as it is suggested that he was an assassin back in Cuba, but also his family have made it over with his mother and sister. But more interestingly in the film despite his sociopathic behaviour he is to a lesser extent show to be a moral character aswell, as he clearly is very protective of his younger sister Gina, and he wants to keep her away from that part of his life. Also later in the film when Tony is given the task by Sosa to do a hit on a political activist who is threat to Sosa's business partners, by planting a bomb underneath his car. But when the day comes and Tony is set on killing the activist, he sees that the activist has picked up his wife and daughter, and he refuses to kill the activist and his family, as he says "this is so fucking bad!" realising of course he too has a family to think of. And its bizarre in a way that Tony Montana has become such an iconic character, as he's hardly a role model, with so many films and TV shows referencing him, and to this day there are plenty of T-shirts and memoribilia to be seen with Tony Montana on them with infamous lines from the film.
In terms of the performances the cast are all top notch her with Al Pacino giving one of his best performances as Tony Montana, as he plays him as a sociopathic egomaniac, who has ruthless ambition as well as a potty mouth! Pacino has many highlights in the film and plenty of great dialouge, of which there are too many mention all at once, but one or two that stand include the scene where he talks to Sosa on their first meeting and says "all I have in this world is my world and my balls and I don't break them for anybody!". Tony has plenty of other memorable lines such as when he talks to Manny as they at the start of the employment with Frank he says "first you get the power, once you get the power you get the women". And near the end when he is overrun by Sosa's men who storm his mansion, he grabs his M16 assault rifle with a grenade launcher attachment, he shouts out the infamous line "say hello to my little friend!!" and later "I'm Tony Montana!! You fuck with ME, you're fucking with the BEST!!". Pacino despite his many firey shouty moments in the film, where he literally spits out his lines (in fact it must have been tough for actors wanting to stand near him!) also has one or two quieter moments of charm, especially when he has to act as a driver for Elvira, and he puts on her hat and says "would you kiss me if I wore a hat?". Also the scene where he sits in his obscenely large bath tub in his mansion, and he watches current affairs programmes on his TV, swearing away, Elvira chastises him for it and calls him boring for talking about money all the time, so he changes channel instead where we see a pelican on screen and he says "OK! Look at that, a pelican! Lovely pelican, fly fly!". Later in the scene he tells Manny to back out of his money laundering deal who calls him an asshole and he says "Hey fuck you, Manny, who put this together??? ME! Who do I trust??? ME!". And another memorable moment is where he drunkenly walks out of a restaurant and berates the onlookers and says "you need people like me so you can point your fucking fingers and say "there's the bad guy!". Overall it remains one of the real highlights in Pacino's career.
The supporting cast are also excellent, starting with Steve Bauer as Manny, who has the daunting job of playing off Pacino at his very best, but he does a great here, and he plays Manny as the more cautious and level headed of the two as well as a charmer and a bit of a womaniser. Bauer has some great moments in the film as well, such as when he decides to try and pick up a girl by sticking his tounge out at her, and she smacks him in the face, and he angrily says "Bitch! Lesbian!". Bauer's scenes with Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio are nicely played too, as shown in the scene where he drives her home after Tony catches her in the nightclub, and she asks him "why don't you take me out?" and he says "because you are Tony's kid sister, and that's where it ends and that's where it stays". Manny also probably would have done a better job at keeping Tony alive should Tony have listened to him, which of course in the end he doesn't, and their final scene together is also quite tragic (which I won't mention so not to give it away).
Robert Loggia also does a great job here as Frank Lopez, the drug dealer, who in the end hasn't got the gumption to stand up to Tony and instead tries to have him killed. Loggia has some terrific moments in the film as well, and some great dialogue, one line which is where he comments on Elvira, "The broad she spends half her time dressing, and the other half undressing!". Loggia also has a terrific scene with Tony where they argue over the deal Tony has done with Sosa without Frank's permission. And Frank reminds Tony "rememeber what I said when you first joined this business. The guys that fly straight, low key, they'll last, but the ones that want it all, champagne, they don't last!". Michelle Pfieffer is also excellent as the beautiful yet cold and drug addled Elvira, who resists Tony as long as she can until he takes over Frank's business empire, and they soon enter a loveless marriage. Michelle's best scenes includes the scene where Elvira dances with Tony in a nightclub and he comes onto her and she says "Even if I was starved, desparate, living on a desert island, begging for it, you would be the last thing I would ever fuck!". The other scene is where she argues with Tony in the restaurant where she outraged when he says he can't even have a baby with her, due to all her drug abuse, she says "I'm leaving you!".
And finally the last few actors I will mention are first off Mary Elizabeth Mastrantoni as Tony's young sister Gina, who Tony is very protective of, and Mary does a fine job with her sympathetic and ultimately tragic role. It was suggested in the film that Tony actually harbors incestuous feelings for her, but looking at it again, it is more that Tony is just overly protective of her. Although Gina later on, after encountering tragedy at Tony's hands, suggestively walks into Tony's office with her robe open and a gun in her hand she says "fuck me, Tony!" as she shoots at him in the climactic scene. F. Murray Abraham is also excellent as Omar Suarez, Frank's devious henchman who clearly despises Tony from the start, and his best line comes when he says to Tony on their first meeting "If anything happens to that money, my boss will shove your head so far up you ass, faster than a rabbit get's fucked!". Paul Shenar does a great job as Sosa, Tony's business partner, although later on their partnership turns sour and he angrily speaks to Tony on the phone saying "I told you a long time ago, you fucking little monkey not to fuck me!!". And finally Harris Yulin is great as the corrupt cop who tries to shake down Tony and is bed with Frank, and his last scene with Tony is great just before he is killed, and Tony says to him "Maybe you can get yourself two tickets to the resurrection!".
Direction wise, De Palma does a terrific job here as well, as he provides a great mixture of drama, suspense and humour. The action scenes in the film are superbly staged, and they are also quite tense, especially the scene where Tony is captured by the Colombians who are about to chainsaw him to death in a bathtub. The scene where Tony also avoids getting assassinated in the nightclub is another tense well staged moment, as two hitman sit a table with uzis hidden under napkins, and a cocaine fuelled Tony barely notices until the last second. And the final scene where Tony confronts Sosa's entire army as they storm his mansion is superb even if it is a bit over the top. Also quickly Oliver Stone, who at the time was as a screenwriter and this was prior to his directorial debut in Platoon, provides a richly well written screenplay with plenty of great dialogue which I have already mentioned as above, and it was at the time the most profane film ever made with over 200 uses of the word "fuck" (with probably over half of them delivered by Pacino!).
And before I finish I thought I would mention the memorable music score written by Giorgio Moroder, which is a mixture of sythensizer based music, and also reflects the new wave scene at the time in the 80s. It also features several memorable songs which Moroder produced, such as "Push it to the limit" used in the montage scene where we see Tony rise in power, and songs used in the nightclub scenes such as "She's on fire" and "Shake it up". At times Mororder's score is a bit cheesy and melodramatic, especially in the tense close-up moments when we see Tony react to Gina flirting with a guy on the dancefloor in the club, and the synthesizer reaches fever pitch to reflect his rage.
So that is it for another very LONG critique of a classic movie, which Scarface undoubtedly is, as it is a highly entertaining and suspenseful film, with one of cinema's most memorable villains.
And with that I shall leave it there my little friend!
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