Scarface (1983)

Directed by Brian De Palma. Starring Al Pacino, Steven Bauer, Michelle Pfeiffer, Robert Loggia, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, Paul Shenar, F. Murray Abraham, Miriam Colon, Harris Yulin, Arnaldo Santana, Angel Salazar, Mark Margolis. [R]

Loose remake of Howard Hawks’ legendary 1932 gangster picture brings the rags-to-riches kingpin story to Miami during the decadent 1980s, swaps out bootlegging for cocaine trafficking, changes its Capone-like central figure to an ex-con Cuban refugee named Tony Montana, and cranks up the violence, foul language and sex. The result: a brutal, stylized crime epic full of greed, excess and carnage, existing primarily on the surface of its traded clichés, where depth is only found by virtue of the fact that most of the characters are disturbingly plausible and lived-in. Pacino’s ruthless cock-a-roach performance is one-of-a-kind—take that as you will. For a movie that runs almost three hours, the pace turns inert at times and the story is surprisingly hollow and uninstructive; it doesn’t show how Tony built his empire and amassed his fortune (aside from a sketchy montage set to “Push It to the Limit”), nor does it try to show what really drives him, nor does it make any sense of his relationships with either vacant-eyed moll Pfeiffer or spirited sister Mastrantonio. In fact, Pfeiffer’s character is only good for one thing in the entire movie: the playfully meta complaint, “Can’t you stop saying ‘f—’ all the time? Can’t you stop talking about money? It’s boring.” Maybe if De Palma and scriptwriter Oliver Stone got high on their own proverbial supply they might have taken the words to heart and fixed some of those problems. Still, not for nothing, the film has gained a significant cult following in the years since its release. Richard Belzer has a bit part as a hack comedian at a nightclub; the overdubbed voices of Charles Durning and Dennis Franz can be heard in the interrogation scene that opens the movie.

68/100