And that's the way it was!

Rating: 10/10 (5 February 2002)

Scarface. Undoubtedly one of the most entertaining movies about gangster life that was ever put on the screen. I saw this movie when it debuted in 1983. At that time, the Academy Awards (whom I have very little respect for) snubbed this film. The feeling then by a lot of people was that it was not a "politically correct film". It denounced and very loudly, everything it could about the government and how drugs were being brought into this country as well. Another stone cast was about the fact that there was too much violence. Well, there was a lot more violence being reported on the news in magazines at the time (Look, Life, etc.) than there could have ever been in a fictionalized account of a person who rose to the top with dirty money. How many people have done this in politics? Anyhoo, the snubbing by the Academy was aimed mostly at Oliver Stone for writing this story and Brian De Palma for directing it. By the way, same people who voted this one out did the same thing with the Color Purple and to Steven Spielberg. Yet another movie that moviegoes loved, but the Academy snubbed.

Makes you wonder about this country. I could tell by most of the reviews on the imdb, that most of these people were either not born or were too small to remember all the hoopla around Scarface. Bottom line: If a picture tells the truth, is blatant and flagrant about it and it sells a lot of tickets at the box office, it will be a flop at the Oscars. But, if it does all of that and people still talk about it 19 years later, it is a classic!!