Pacino eats the world

Rating: 9/10 (10 May 2003)

Great film.
DePalma has a talent, maybe, for capturing the essence of the Eighties in many of his films, they are sealed in a capsule of crap clothes and crapper disco music, and this is no exeption (except for some of the suits).
He is considered a post-modern director for his all style and no substance filmmaking, but I think Scarface has a heartbeat and is more complex than it appears.
For a start, it's great entertainment, and believe it or not, rather realistic in it's depiction of evil and greed and what they do to the human psyche. Of course, the seed already has to be there, and as Pacino shows, Montana is hungry. He's a big fish wannabe, and his climb to the top of the pile is what you'd imagine a young Jimmy Cagney to have been like had there been a prelude to White Heat.
Insanely quotable, Pacino has recently been voted number one greatest actor of all time in some dodgy poll, well, I don't believe you can measure one kind of genius against another, but if it came down to it, it's performances like this that hold him up as The Daddy. He eats not only his world, but the damn scenery aswell, and even the great supporting cast can't take this film away from him; the fact that everyone seems scared of him doesn't appear to be put on.
Also it has one of the best endings to a movie, ever.