A good man turned bad

Rating: 9/10 (12 November 2016)

Tony Montana was a man who wanted to get married and have children.
He had some excellent qualities. He had incredible courage. How many people could watch their friend being carved up with a chainsaw and then spit defiance into the face of the man who did it? He was honest and forthright. He loved kids. He loved his sister. And his friend Manny.
Somewhere along the line he came to the belief that in order to get married to the most suitable woman you would need to have lots of money. So get rich first. With all the trappings - the boats, the fancy cars and gaudy residences (and, of course, tigers) - which are likely to attract the right sort of woman. But how do you achieve that if you have no education or skills? Well, crime of course.
So there was the man who wanted to get married and have kids and the man who wanted to get rich. And gradually these two individuals grew apart and began to destroy each other. As the movie progresses he turns into some kind of bloated monster, snorting his way like a pig through ever-growing piles of coke as he begins to realise that the vast sums of money he is making are not delivering the things he at heart wanted. Moreover, he is less and less happy and snaps at every little thing. The filming is deliberately over the top, from the comical and tastelessly gaudy furnishings of his home, to his boorish and drunken behaviour at an up-market restaurant. His wife (who is not a dumb blond) despises him. His close associates cringe in embarrassment (and fear) at his ridiculous antics.
He knows all this and hates himself for it. But he can no longer escape. He has reached the pinnacle of his financial success and he must go on. Yet, from time to time we hear from the other Tony Montana. He keeps asking after Elvira after she leaves him. At the last moment he refuses to assassinate a hostile journalist because there are kids in the car.
Under all the strain (and cocaine) he becomes more and more confused. He is out of his depth. Drowning. He sees himself shoot his best friend and destroy his beloved sister. With another mountain of coke up his nostrils and a suicidal bravado he takes on several dozen people who have been sent to kill him. Realizing the emptiness of what he has become he is out to destroy himself, and he succeeds in this in the end with a melodramatic belly-flop into his own swimming pool. This last is so ludicrous that it's amusing, but that's the person he has become - a man consumed by power, drugs and greed, leaving the other Tony Montana somewhere else along the way.
I don't like to see violence in films when it's there to titillate the audience. This is a violent movie because it depicts violent criminals. It's also a movie about a good and talented man who could have been happy with so little but fell into the wrong company. Brilliantly portrayed by Al Pacino.