Watch The Godfather II or Goodfellas instead!

Rating: Null/10 (3 May 2017)

I've seen parts of this from-rags-to-riches-story before in other films: The Godfather II, Wolf of Wallstreet and Goodfellas. And they all came up with something more entertaining and intelligent, while Scarface is kind of the 80's version of it - with more action and cheesy 80ies film score.
What went wrong? First of all, Pacino is not doing a bad acting job, but his character is just not fleshed out much. He starts as a poor refugee, willing to do some dirty business and he seems to be a smart guy who knows where he wants to get and how to do it. Despite all the dialogue I can't tell you more about him. He is not too deep and neither likable as a character, he doesn't have any charming side to him at any point of the movie. The story of Toni makes a sudden jump to becoming a drug-lord himself, which is just not believable. Somewhere the movie just lost me. And it doesn't really culminate to a climax - he just gets busted in the most boring way.
In the end there is an interesting little "twist" with his sister (who didn't play a major role in the plot before) that could have been much more dramatic. Other characters are totally neglected by the script altogether. For example, his wife has a final moment of attention when she makes a brief scene in a restaurant. But that's it and we don't see her after that.
It ends with a lot of action and shooting. If you want that, just skip to the last 17 minutes. Other than that, this movie is just not giving much to the patient viewer.