Superb morality play about the corruptive nature of greed & power

Rating: 8/10 (11 November 2018)

Undoubtedly one of the all time greats in its depiction of the rise and fall of a certain character and/or their empire, Scarface is a fascinating moral drama which slowly descends further into madness and greediness.
The character of Tony Montana, who is ofcourse brilliantly portrayed by Al Pacino, is one of the most fascinating and morally complex anti hero protagonist's in cinema. Mind you, he is generally never shown as being any more than a greed ridden psychopath with little consideration of human life, but Tony's backstory about him fleeing communist Cuba and his subsequent hatred for this ideology does give him tons of depth as to why he is the person that he is today. Even though he is quite unlikeable from the start, his descent into madness combined with his rise to power does truly slowly show the audience what the corruption of a position of power does to a human being, in a way that is quite similar to the excellent portrayal of Daniel Day Lewis as Daniel Plainview in There Will Be Blood (2007). Both characters are selfish, arrogant and slightly psychopathic from the start, but their descent into madness is still a really fascinating piece of character development., as Tony is gradually shown succumbing to his own greed.
As possibly the ultimate Al Pacino performance, it is no secret that his acting is absolutely brilliant as Tony Montana. Anger, hatred, and even a bit of disconnection and sadness ( In scenes with his mother for example, who shuns him for the life he leads ) are all emotions that Al Pacino captures perfectly in his role. This versatile and emotional performance really shows the wide range of his acting capabilities after the quite monotonous and calculated character of Michael Corleone that he portrays in The Godfather. Other excellent performances are provided by the likes of Robert Loggia, F. Murray Abraham & Michelle Pfeiffer as the stand-outs of this superb cast.
The set design truly immerses the audience into breathing the Miami air by its atmospheric replication of it, as most of the film was filmed in Los Angeles due to a lot of Cubans in Miami presumably protesting against the subject of this film. Particularly the color palette is outstanding, and provides many beautiful images during the nearly three hour running time. There is a lot of variation in color, as one might expect from a film that portrays something as lively as Miami. It does however not serve to be there to brighten up the day, as the film itself is quite hopeless, dark & in a way, even quite sad. Brian de Palma uses a lot of variation in his scenes, with many shots panning right, left, up or down, and sometimes varying between them during the same shot. This makes every scene and every encounter look fresh, interesting and dynamic. Oliver Stone's screenplay also results in quite a fascinating coherent narrative that slowly but surely brings Tony closer to his inevitable fall, which ironically is caused by one of the very few 'morally good' actions that Tony performs ( Saving the family, which causes Sosa to send assassins after him ). This is also a nice avoidance of typical Hollywood cliché's, because it shows us that performing the morally right deed will not always end in joy.
The original score by Giorgio Moroder is fantastic, with a simple synthesizer melody that perfectly captures the duality of Tony's situation, as there is a sense of superiority in it which symbolizes Tony being on top of the world, but there is also a sense of eeriness in it which symbolizes the impending doom and death that is coming for him. The final scene in particular is also a fantastic visual example of this, as Tony falls into the pool with the statue behind him stating 'The world is yours', which is ofcourse a superb bit of irony of his gradual corruption to get to the top.
There are some slighly absurd sequences, such as the scenes in which Gina ( Tony's sister ) is with some guy and Tony's compulsive protection disorder takes over, which shows us a close up of Tony's eyes while some triggering music plays. It seems kind of forced and lacks a bit of subtlety, which is something that is handled very well in the rest of the film. It is also quite obvious that Tony takes a bit too many bullets in the final sequence to still be standing, but this can be categorized as 'Suspension of disbelief'. Still, the final shootout is in a way quite reminiscent to Taxi Driver's, except that in Scarface the attempted scale of the fight results in quite an absurd and ridiculous firefight, with Tony gunning down about 20 professional hitman while being shot about 30 times. However, the gunfight itself is technically executed very well. The rich set design of the mansion as the beautiful shootout location, the fantastic editing, and the competent direction really does create a superb action sequence.
Scarface is a fantastic and atmospheric study on greed, and is indeed much deeper than the 'Shoot 'em up gangster flick' it is for some reason many times labelled as.