This one outstays its welcome

Rating: 6/10 (2 June 2007)

Not so much a remake of the Hawks' great gangster film as a re-imagining with drugs taking over from booze and Tony now a Cuban immigrant, (it's set in Florida). Oliver Stone's script purports to give the film a deeper political dimension but it doesn't work. The whole Cuban thing seems like so much window-dressing. On the other hand, it looks fantastic; (Ferdinando Scarifiotti is credited as 'visual consultant'). De Palma uses colour and the wide-screen to give the film the look and feel of a pop-art cartoon and an the centre of this cartoon is a highly animated performance from Al Pacino in the title role, (he's feral where Muni was ape-like), but there's too much of him; he's never off the screen and he's acting all the time. The best performance comes from a young and untried Michelle Pfeiffer; she's street-wise and sexy and smart behind the eyes even when strung out on cocaine.
The incestuous sister sub-plot isn't handled as explicitly here as it was in the original, (it's there, but it doesn't seem like a road either Stone or De Palma wants to go down). It's no disgrace and De Palma handles the violent set-pieces with aplomb but for all its sophistication it doesn't hold a candle to Hawk's original version and at almost three hours it goes on forever.