Details
Movie Description
Brian De Palma's blood-and-sun-drenched saga of a Cuban deportee's rise to the top of Miami's cocaine business has become something of a popular classic since its release; it's been referenced in rap songs and subsequent gangster movies and quoted the world over. Despite this lovefest with the dialogue, the film's brutal violence and lack of positive characters still make it controversial and disliked by certain critics. Al Pacino stars as Tony Montana, whose intelligence, guts, and ambition help him skyrocket from dishwasher to the top of a criminal empire but whose eventual paranoia and incestuous desire for his kid sister (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio) prove his undoing. Michelle Pfeiffer plays Tony's neglected coke-addicted trophy wife, and Steven Bauer is his concerned friend. F. Murray Abraham, Robert Loggia, and Paul Shenar are some of Tony's sleazy business partners and potential killers. Oliver Stone wrote the expletive-packed screenplay, based on Howard Hawks's 1932 version--which was ostensibly about Al Capone and starred Paul Muni and George Raft. The synth-heavy Giorgio Moroder score expertly evokes the drug-fueled decadence of 1980s Miami, and De Palma provides several of his elaborate set pieces, including a horrific showstopper in a motel room with a chain saw.
Synopsis
SCARFACE is splattered with so much adrenaline and blood it's a virtual Hawaiian shirt of machismo. A Cuban hustler who immigrates to Miami in the infamous 1980 refugee boatlift wills his way to the top of a cocaine cartel by being more violent than anyone else can possibly imagine--the same drive that leads him to the top ultimately causes his downfall.
Industry Reviews
"...The most stylish and provocative -- and maybe the most vicious -- serious film about the American underworld since [THE GODFATHER]....Vivid and arresting."
New York Times - p.C18 - Vincent Canby (12/09/1983)
"...SCARFACE is a grandiose modern morality play....[The film] possesses an engaging topicality and packs a punch..."
Variety - Cart. (11/30/1983)
"...Pfeiffer, now as then, steals the show..."
USA Today - Mike Clark (02/05/1993)
"...[It's] fun to simply enjoy this amazing Al Pacino vehicle for the bloody, politically incorrect, relentlessly macho potboiler that it is..."
Entertainment Weekly - Entertainment Weekly Staff (05/23/2003)
"...Still perhaps De Palma's most genuinely convincing work..."
Sight and Sound - Dan Leigh (03/01/2001)
"...An exciting crime picture....A gallery of wonderful supporting performances....SCARFACE is a wonderful portrait of a real louse..."
Chicago Sun-Times - Roger Ebert (09/19/2003)
"...Pacino plays the odious Tony Montana with a dead-on mix of predatory steel and flawed flashiness..."
Total Film - Andy Lowe (04/01/2001)
"...This Brian DePalma butcher block has found a thriving life of its own..."
Movieline - Michael Atkinson (12/01/2003)
"[A] brilliant, bloody Prohibition-era gangster movie..."
Premiere - Premiere Staff (12/01/2003)
5 stars out of 5 -- "It's undoubtedly the larger than life quality of the film which pleases many, but young turk Oliver Stone also delivers a potent screenplay..."
Ultimate DVD - Simon Edwards (12/01/2006)
Quotations
"First you get the money, then you get the power, then you get the woman."--Tony (Al Pacino) to Manny (Steven Bauer)
"Say hello to my little friend!"--Tony before firing his grenade launcher
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