Reviews
Variety - ...SCARFACE is a grandiose modern morality play....[The film] possesses an engaging topicality and packs a punch..., Entertainment Weekly - ...[It's] fun to simply enjoy this amazing Al Pacino vehicle for the bloody, politically incorrect, relentlessly macho potboiler that it is..., USA Today - ...Pfeiffer, now as then, steals the show..., Chicago Sun-Times - Scarface is one of those special movies, like "The Godfather," that is willing to take a flawed, evil man and allow him to be human., The New York Times - Scarface is the most stylish and provocative - and maybe the most vicious - serious film about the American underworld since Francis Ford Coppola's "Godfather.", Total Film - ...Pacino plays the odious Tony Montana with a dead-on mix of predatory steel and flawed flashiness..., New York Times - ...The most stylish and provocative -- and maybe the most vicious -- serious film about the American underworld since [THE GODFATHER]....Vivid and arresting..., Empire - Perfomances are excellent, and despite its moralistic conclusion, the film has since become de rigueur viewing for crack barons, who know a good shoot-em-up when they see one.
Additional Information
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.
