Movie Review : Scarface (1983)

The vast majority of people my age have seen SCARFACE at least once. In many ways, it's the adult equivalent of having seen the STAR WARS saga or for the later generations, the LORD OF THE RINGS trilogy. It's considered to be the meaner little brother of THE GODFATHER movies in contemporary culture. What fascinates me about SCARFACE is that it's one of these movies that keep coming back in cinema discussions that no new crime drama seems ever be able to top. It's a movie that has achieved sanctity in the eyes of movie lovers. There is a couple reasons why SCARFACE transcended its status and became somewhat of a cultural rite of passage, which I'm about to get into.

If you've enver watched SCARFACE, you need to know that it's a spiritual remake of Howard Hawks' 1932 movie of the same name. Director Brian De Palma dedicated the movie to his iconic colleague. It's about a Cuban refugee named Antonio Montana (Al Pacino) who found his way to the U.S during the now infamous Marial boatlift, where over 125,000 criminals and mental health patients were shipped to the U.S by Fidel Castro. Montana has nothing when he first set foot in America, but he's willing to do just about anything to achieve hiw own vision of the American dream. Did I mention Montana is a little bit of a psychopath? Once he get a little traction in Miami, American will get way more than it bargained for by blindly accepting him in.

SCARFACE strikes me as the first historical example of a movie where the bad guy ''wins'', but where you're also supposed to root for him. If the movie had been written by anobody less twisted than Oliver Stone, the protagonist of SCARFACE would've been Tony Montana's best friend Manny Ribera (Steven Bauer), who's tough but kind-hearted and in love with Tony little sister Gina (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio). He's far more of a classic protagonist than Tony who, over the length of SCARFACE manages to: stab a middle-aged man in the gut. coldly witness the spectacular execution of one of his co-workers, force a woman who doesn't love him into marriage, declare war to a dangerous coallition of international criminals, pour mountains of cocaine on his office in order to sniff it and many more awesome things a classic protagonist wouldn't do.

Eat your heart out, Joseph Campbell.

Of course, like most groundbreaking films, SCARFACE wasn't a darling with the critics. It was called: ''an empty, overblown and bullying B-movie.'' Well, it's not the first case of movie critics striking out on a future iconic movie. The potency of SCARFACE is liberating, because it's not a slave to the rigid scenario structure we're still subjected to nowadays. It's also kind of easy to love. The cinematic language of SCARFACE is not difficult. It's a rather straightforward yet grandiloquent movie that vaguely resembles a Greek tragedy and who's only subtlety is to criticize the concept of the American Dream when it wasn't cool to do so, through the use of symbolism. Tony Montana's a bad guy, but SCARFACE, the movie is a rebel and everybody loves a rebel, right?

It's not a really groundbreaking thing to love SCARFACE anymore. It's undoubtedly an amazing movie. One that kicked doors down for storytellers around the world. We wouldn't have had a BREAKING BAD without SCARFACE. It's bound to be forever beloved by anybody who likes cinema at least a little, and who doesn't have overbearing morals. I love that movie, although it doesn't exactly make me special. Your friends who still have a DVD collection in the age of Netflix probably all have a copy of the movie. SCARFACE is an iconic film in history for both its brash rebellion against Hollywood's rigid storytelling standards and its adult take on success and achievement. People love SCARFACE for the same reasons that it feels obscenely good to say ''fuck you'' to someone's face.