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Rating: Null/10 (26 November 2004)

I'm pretty sure this will offend a lot of people but I actually think this film is terribly overrated. I always thought of it as a classic but I watched it again recently and found it disappointing. I think what bothers me is, first, that the film charts the very beginning of Montana's ascent through the ranks and his demise. His period of 'success' is played out in montage in a way that seems very cheesy and dated. My second objection concerns the character himself. Pacino's acting is fine but the character he plays is thoroughly unlikeable and hard to sympathies with. In other mob films such as Goodfellas, Casino, Carlito's Way and the Godfather the principal protagonist is also a gangster whose unravelling is self-inflicted. Take for example Carlito's Way. Carlito is killed as the result of a problem he caused, not anyone else which brings out the pathos of his situation so poignantly. In Scarface, by contrast, the protagonist is violent, angry and petty with no discernible traces of humanity. Even his relations with his family are nasty. The point is that I found it impossible to feel anything with Montana. The successful mob films challenge us by showing us real characters whose choices are motivated by love, loyalty, family etc. but who end up going down a path of violent excess from which it is difficult or impossible to escape. Thus, we meet characters that seem redeemable and so we are engaged and interested in their fate. Scarface simply tells the story of a thug who is a thug not because of circumstances but because he wants to be. As such, Montana's story is not one of tragic inevitability but just inevitability.