A quintessential gangster movie

Rating: 10/10 (15 December 2008)

STAR RATING: ***** Saturday Night **** Friday Night *** Friday Morning ** Sunday Night * Monday Morning
Since they're two of the most renowned actors of their time, I often think, as a serious movie buff, who I prefer. Al Pacino or Robert De Niro. Due to sheer scale of number of films I've seen, I usually tend to go with De Niro. But then I think, have I seen enough films from either actor to really make an informed decision? Nah, I've seen enough of De Niro's movies, but maybe not enough of Pacino's. Twenty five years after it first came out, I finally saw Pacino in one of his most revered roles, that of Cuban gangster Tony Montana, who cockily built up a massive cocaine empire in Miami in the very early 1980s, only for his greed and recklessness to blow it all.
While the film itself is impressive enough, and Pacino's performance carries it wonderfully, it's definitely Montana the character who made the film so memorable for so long. Representing the dark side of the American dream, where anybody can be somebody doing anything, the frowned upon exile from Castro's Island, seen as rubbish heaped upon the States in exchange for some political agreement, with his cocksure, arrogant attitude epitomises the 80s ideals of greed and excess, much like his contemporaries Gordon Gekko from Wall Street and JR Ewing from Dallas. Allowed to grow obscenely rich from his ill gotten gains in the all-for-yourself era, his urge to make noise is apparent before big success happens, driving around in his cadillac with it's tacky, Del Boy style interior furnishings, right through to his giant in-door jacuzzi when he's made it big. Never afraid to show the darkness of the crime world, the film is at times brutally violent, with a brutal mid air hanging from a helicopter, through to an explosively violent finale where those he has crossed catch up with him in his tacky big house, ending up with one man with a giant automatic weapon taking on a whole army of machine gun toting lunatics. Brian De Palma reliably stamps his unmistakable style all over it, while the tone may feel a little too light at times, it's none-the-less an essential part of making the film what it is.
An unforgettable film that's left a permanent mark on the crime movie genre, Scarface has lost none of it's power quarter of a century after it first came out. *****