Scarface: The Rise and Fall of Tony Montana

Rating: 9/10 (3 June 2019)

The 1980s were a tremendous time for popular culture in the United States. MTV was on everyone's television, Reaganomics were in effect, and Pac-Man was on fire. Few things from the 80s have become so ingrained in our memories of those times as much as the film Scarface. A near flawless performance by Al Pacino, and a gangster-esque theme helped to make that happen.
Pacino plays a Cuban refugee named Tony Montana. He is a little rough around the edges and begins the movie with murdering an ex-cuban official for his green card. He goes on to work for drug lord Frank Lopez but gets greedy quickly. Montana has visions of a drug operation much larger than his boss had ever planned and that creates some problems. Montana kills Frank Lopez and takes everything over. This seems like a great thing to him but it is the beginning of his eventual epic downfall.
Montana gets everything he could have asked for and more. He amasses an empire with boats, cars, mansions, a pet tiger and a supermodel wife. All this came at a great cost to him. He knew that for the world to truly be his it would cost nothing less than his soul, and it most certainly did. One scene represents this perfectly. Montana is sitting in a fancy nightclub called the Babylon. He is accompanied by his pissed-off wife and his loyal partner and he can't even sit up to talk with them. He is so gone from his own supply of his cocaine all he can do is sit there with his ghost-like face and feel bored. This scene is no doubt a sad one, but a critical scene in helping us understand Tony Montana.
De Palma, the director, casts Al Pacino into the role but didn't really give him a character. He writes the entire film solely with Montana doing all the unpredictable, "ballsy" moves. De Palma creates cocaine as the only trait Tony Montana has. This creates a very unconventional gangster that is thrilling to watch. De Palma and his writers strived to create this movie that didn't feel like Goodfellas of The Godfather, and boy did they succeed. This masterpiece of a film not once felt like another film and kept me guessing throughout the duration of it.
Another element to this film that De Palma nailed perfectly was the scenery and the atmosphere of it. The film was set in Miami, but due to strong opposition from the Miami Board of Tourism it was shot in Little Havana in Los Angeles. The architecture and the overall aura of the place made it seem so real.
Perhaps the most beautiful thing about Scarface is its true understanding of the criminal at that time. It ignores the traditional "mob" terms such as boss and underboss. Rather, it simply tells the story of Tony Montana going straight to the top from his dedication to the game. In short, Scarface is a paragon of epic drama and storytelling that is a must watch. In my mind, Tony Montana in Scarface was significantly better than Michael Corleone in The Godfather.