Crime doesn't pay.

Rating: Null/10 (7 March 1999)

"Scarface" is one of those films where I saw it, liked it, then kind of forgot about it a few months later. But after a friend recently gave me the film for my birthday (Hi Kari!) I can't believe I ever let a single frame of this pass from my memory.
My problem with most movies involving orginized crime is that they seem kind of dry and/or monochromatic. Now don't get me wrong, I like a good drama as much as anyone else, but after a while, you see one gangland rubout and you've seen them all.
Brian DePalma, in effect, gives the gangster movie a lobotomy, reducing this to it's simplest elements, and then amplifying them. In its three hour running time we have countless shootings (all bloody), a wonderful chainsaw murder, massive drug usage, non-stop profanities, and other trappings of wall to wall decadence. And who could forget the epic final shootout?
Like most of DePalma's other films, one can sense the director's detachment from the material, as if the events depicted are so over the top in their presentation, that they seem to be taking place on another planet. I guess that's what I've always liked about his work.
After viewing this film, which even with its 3-hour running time rushes by at top speed, one doesn't feel like they have watched an accurate depiction of organized crime, but a horror movie version of it instead.
That's a compliment.