De Palma's, Stone's and Pacino's finest hour.

Rating: Null/10 (14 August 2001)

I recently caught up with "Scarface" on DVD. The three main people involved in this film, I feel, have never come close in their subsequent careers to matching what they achieved here.
First of all, the script. Absolutely flawless. Stone has always been too didactic and preachy for my liking ("NBK", anyone?), but here he was spot on. What amazes me now looking at the film is the way that it comments of the attitude and mentality of greed and materialism that was very much part of the 1980's while the film was still of that time; no flippant irony like films of ttoday that look back on that period. This is probably one of the reasons why it failed at the box office; people of the time didn't want to see the truth of what they had created.
Secontly, De Palma. The film is very much in the style of an opera, a Greek tragedy if you will. De Palma has always had an arrogant, ballsy visual style. It was a perfect marriage in "Scarface" with its subject matter. Even a small sequence like the one where he is left alone in the bathroom watching his T.V.'s, the way the camera pulls back to reveal physical emptiness, says so much about Montana so beautifully that words feel completely unnecessary.
Finally, Pacino.Like Jack Nicholson he is at times in danger of becomming a self-parody and lazy as an actor. However, this couldn't be furthur from the truth in "Scarface". The fact that Tony Montana is such a repellent character and yet you, as a viewer, are totally rivetted to and compelled by him is a major achievement on Pacino's behalf. I'll never forget the scene where he's on the phone to Mani after Elvira's left him and he asks Mani that, if she calls, to tell her that he loves her. Just that brief dlas of humanity within the monster that he has become.
"Scarface" is a modern classic of cinema. If you haven't seen this film, do so as soon as possible. This stands along side "Once Upon A Time In America" and "Goodfellas" as a film that completely trandscends its genre limitations and has so much, much more to offer than mere vicsceral thrills. In other words, a brain behind the brawn.