Nothing exceeds like excess

Rating: 10/10 (18 May 2012)

It's no surprise really that this film is the most iconic gangster film of the 80's. This decade is synonymous with excess and a certain bad taste. Scarface epitomised these factors, it clearly connected with the times. Everything about the film is over the top, be it performances, dialogue, drug taking or violence. It's highly stylised, with smooth camera-work, elaborate sets and a striking sense of colour. All things considered, it's a definitive crime film of its decade.
It's a loose remake of the 30's Howard Hawks film of the same name. It shares the rise and fall narrative but with a veneer of ultra-violence. Unlike revisionist gangster flicks such as The Godfather it doesn't end with the gangster at the height of his powers, instead it adopts the rise and fall structure of the 30's gangster films. In this sense, Scarface is a combination of old fashioned narrative, with 80's excess. It's director Brian De Palma was no stranger to controversy of course, with several infamous violent films under his belt, such as the highly stylised slasher Dressed To Kill. He was pretty fearless when it came to this kind of thing and he was ably supported with a script from Oliver Stone, who would of course go on to become a confrontational director himself. Clearly it would be insane not to acknowledge the input of star Al Pacino. His depiction of Tony Montana remains one of the most quoted film characters of them all, and overall it is a tour-de-force performance.
Scarface is more than anything a highly entertaining movie. It always looks great, has an appropriately synthetic score from Gorgio Moroder and has plenty of bloody violence. The whole chainsaw sequence with the Colombians remains an incredibly intense and brilliantly staged scene. But it also has an interesting historical context with Montana arriving along with a mass of Cuban exiles, who indeed really did arrive in Florida to flee Fidel Castro's communist regime. So it's also a look at the way a foreign criminal tried to live the American Dream. It could only really end one way.