Compelling

Rating: 8/10 (5 November 2003)

I missed this intentionally when it came out in 1983 believing it to be another version of the Al Capone story. Of course Al Pacino would be brilliant as Al Capone and demand every square inch of the screen and get it. And he was and he did. And director Brian DePalma would spray the screen in scarlet, and he did. However this updated and revised version set in Miami from a script by Oliver Stone is very much worth watching even though it's almost three hours long.
First of all, Al Pacino is riveting as Tony Montana, a Cuban refugee released from prison by Fidel Castro in 1980 who arrives in Florida with a yearning to rule the world and a huge chip on his shoulder. His character is an extreme version of the "live fast, die young" species, the kind of guy who takes extreme chances and fears nothing. It is a shame that it is not obvious that for every one of the Tony Montanas in the world who actually made it to the top of the cocaine pile, there are thousands who weren't able to dodge the bullets and died not just young, but very young.
Second, there is not a dead spot in the whole movie. Stone's action-driven script and DePalma's focused direction compel our attention. If you can stand the bestial mentality and the animalistic flash culture of the drug lords and their sleazy world, you might even want to see this twice.
What I found myself watching closely was Michelle Pfeiffer at twenty-something, strikingly beautiful and totally degenerate as the cocaine-addled moll. Also very much worth watching was Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio as Tony Montana's sister Gina. The big brother/little sister incestuous theme (from the original Scarface of 1931 starring Paul Muni and directed by Howard Hawks) was craftily prepared and reached a striking climax (if you will) in the scene in which Gina tells Montana that he must "have her" (that's not exactly the words she used) since he won't let anybody else have her. The touch of necrophilia that followed was perhaps gratuitous.
What I loved was the way DePalma reminded us again and again of how trapped the characters were by their desperate indulgences, the expensive liquor, the cigars, the cocaine, the stacks of money that took hours to count by machine. The scene in which Pfeiffer takes a snort of cocaine, a puff of a cigarette and a swallow of booze one after the other as the only thing she knows how to do in this world (with the white powder still on her nostrils) was wonderful in its piteous effect. I also liked the scene in which Montana, seated in his black leather chair with his initials in gold lettering, surrounded by his security video screens, dives into a pile of cocaine and comes up with it on his nose. Reminds me of the old doper saying, "Too much is never enough."
The shoot 'em up finale of course was much, much overdone and about as realistic as a John Wayne barroom fight, but I loved the way Pacino played Montana near the end as a kind of paranoid Napoleon, the little guy who wanted to rule the world now finished and insane. Note, by the way, in how many scenes Pacino played a very vigorous persona sitting down.
In a way this is in the final analysis a morality tale, a kind of very flashy "crime does not pay" saga not because the cops will get you (they don't) but because the life itself will corrupt you beyond anything human. Those who live by the gun will die by the gun, and there is no security among murders and thieves.
(Note: Over 500 of my movie reviews are now available in my book "Cut to the Chaise Lounge or I Can't Believe I Swallowed the Remote!" Get it at Amazon!)