input: Director Spike Lee is famous for making films pointing out racism. In many of films, such "Do The Right Thing," most of the white people are all brutal racists. In this movie, interracial marriage is the subject, with racism once again being the entire issue.

What Lee does, however, is once again demonstrate his bigotry against Christianity. It's amazing the double standards that exist in the film world. If Lee or anyone else ever produced this kind of bias against another group he would be vilified, but Christians? Hey, it's "open season" on them.

Ossie Davis, a reverend in this film, shoots his son and then puts the smoldering gun down on top of his Bible. They zoom in on that for another closeup just in case you missed it. Hey, folks, here's another Bible reader and look what he''s like! Lee does this sort of thing in just about every movie he makes.

He shows the same hatred when dealing with race relations. Who could argue with portraying racism as an evil thing? However, Lee perpetuates it in this film as he has in his other films. His obvious bitterness toward white people doesn't help the situation. It only adds fuel to the fire.

Hey, Spike: start "doing the right thing" and leave your prejudices in the closet. Better yet, "get over it."

This is too bad because the subject matter could have made for a thought- provoking film if it had been done with objectivity and intelligence.

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pos/neg ans: negative

input: this is the only movie i have ever walked out on. bad acting-- bad plot-- bad casting-- bad directing-- bad cinematography-- if they had set out to make a bad picture they couldn't have done a better job. i hope they are proud of his turkey. i'm surprised anyone associated with this film was ever hired again in hollywood. don't waste your time!

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pos/neg ans: negative

input: Ya know when one looks at this Brian DePalma film today, I'm sure there has been allot of criticism about how dated it is. Also, about the violence. When I looked at this film on VHS when I was 20, I thought it was ulta-violent and gritty as well. But I didn't get 'it'.

A few decades go by and man, how I know how much I didn't get in this film!! This is a remake of an excellent film which was done back in the 30's/40's. How can you improve upon a classic? Ya don't. But you tell a tale that is brought up to date through the eyes of the "new immigrants" during the most greed ridden decade, the over indulgent 80's. DePalma, Stone and the gang present an ambitious, disturbing and darn right good film.

Yes....Disco was dying and New Wave/Punk were taking over but these immigrants from Cuba who had to make a new home in Florida couldn't tell the difference. It was exciting, it was what they wanted but how to get it???? To these immigrants, there was only one way to get it in Florida where they were..by having lots of money and to get the money, you had to take over running a drug empire.

Al Pacino was fantastic to me as Tony Montana, the "little train that could". What an amazing way to have your lead character look at America: to fight, kill, steal. lie, cheat all to get -- "the money, the women and the power."

That's what Tony saw as the American dream.

He wanted it, he wanted to live it and in his circle saw nothing wrong with how he went to get it. Tony Montana's command of the English language was heavily saturated with the "f" word but what did you expect, Emily Post's finishing school for him and his co-horts? Look at how they CAME to America, what they knew, what they were exposed to. This is the way Tony and his crew chose to "be all they can be in America." It was all about the power. Tony Montana would and did ANYTHING to achieve it..it all its violent, lying, stealing, crooked, thieving glory.

The part of the film that personified the 1980's to me, is the money laundering. Tony's crew bringing sacks of drug money to the bank. Did those around Tony and his crew care? At the clubs where he spent and drank? Nope. Money was money and with money, you get the power. Tony was living high off the hog. He and his pretty blond American trophy he married played well by Michelle Pfieffer.

After Tony Montana's rise to power, he finds out its really crappy up there. He's riddled with doubt, he's drug addicted, he's paranoid, he's surrounded by those who want to take him on in a bloody take-over, his trophy 80's American blonde drug addicted wife he finds out is a bore, he needs to keep atop of his empire because...he's going down. And down he goes in a horrific violent fashion, but again I ask, what do you expect?

This is the quintessential 1980's film telling you a warped tale of how some misunderstand the American Dream...to obsession. It's violent, bloody, overly so..but it drives the point disturbingly home. Not all Cubans thrown out of Cuba who landed in Florida in the 80's were anything like Tony Montana. Give me a break. But the showing of how miserable the 1980's were with its emphasis on greed and money as the only measures in the USA to "be somebody" and have power took its tool on these poor characters and their lives in America.

Makes you wonder -- has anything from then -- been learned today?

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pos/neg ans: positive

input: I rented this film thinking it was the sobbingly sad 1959 version I saw as a kid. It was not. I was therefore very disappointed with what I felt was marginal acting, poor character development, and most of all, failure to highlight the relationship between the boy and his dog. In this version... the "Dog of Flanders" is just a cute "aside" to the movie. Get the 1959 version!

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pos/neg ans:
negative