"Scarface" by Brian De Palma: a review

The movie opens with Tony Montana, a Cuban immigrant who comes to Florida to seek asylum there. However, he is ceased by INS officials who suspect him of criminal activity and he is placed in a camp called Freedomtown with several other Cubans. They are to be detained for thirty days while their visa petitions are reviewed and then given green cards. While in the camp, a wealthy man named Frank Lopez requests Tony and his best friend Manny to kill Emilio Rebenga, who was a former assistant to Fidel Castro. Both men get their green cards and secure employment as dishwashers in a sandwich shop until an associate of Lopez, named Omar Suarez offers them a job which turns out to be unloading marijuana. Tony scoffs at the amount of money they are to be paid for the job and turns Omar down. Omar gives them another job to collect cocaine from a man named Hector who is a Colombian cocaine dealer.

They set out to do the job accompanied by Angel Fernandez and Chi Chi. The job does not go smoothly though and Angel is killed. Before Tony suffers the same fate, Manny and Chi Chi rescue him. Hector escapes but Tony shoots him out on the street. Tony, Manny and Chi Chi escape with the cocaine and money before the police arrive on the scene. Lopez is very impressed with how the job went and that the men brought back the cash and the cocaine. He decides to hire Tony and his crew to represent the Cuban mafia. It is at this point that Tony meets the beautiful Elvira and falls for her, creating tension between Tony and Frank. After some time, Tony decides to pay a visit to his estranged family. His father left the family when Tony was little and now his mother and sister Gina are living in Miami working in some sort of cross stitching business. Tony turns up on their doorstep all dressed up and offers them money, but Tony’s mother is full of rage with him because he abandoned them years ago in favour of the Cuban lifestyle. Gina, on the other hand accepts Tony’s money without their mother knowing about it. Tony loves Gina very much and is very protective of her.

Later on in Bolivia, Tony assists Omar in setting up a deal for Frank and decides to negotiate another deal with Alejandro Sosa who is a powerful drug lord. Sosa realizes that Omar was a spy for the police in the past and orders for him to be murdered. When Tony returns to Florida, he gets into trouble with Frank over the deal and decides to go it alone. He then proceeds to turn his attentions to Elvira and asks her to marry him. Frank is not happy about this and wants Tony dead but he fails to succeed. Instead, Tony and Manny kill Frank. Tony marries Elvira, goes into business with Sosa, buy’s a mansion and a beauty salon for Gina. Manny and Gina are falling in love but they decide to keep it a secret from Tony because he does not want her to date anybody. Tony becomes a very successful man but his addiction to cocaine spirals out of control as does his wife’s. His banker informs him that he will have to pay more for laundering the drug money and Manny suggests a way to save money on laundering fees. It goes wrong though as Manny’s contact is an undercover cop and it is likely that Tony will get sent to prison. Sosa steps in and tells Tony to go to Bolivia to assassinate a journalist who is about to expose Sosa and Tony reluctantly agrees.

Elvira and Tony split up and he goes to Bolivia to carry out the assassination but it goes wrong and Sosa is suspected of the planned execution of the journalist. Tony finds out that Manny and Gina are together and he shoots Manny. Sosa orders his men to assassinate Tony. Gina confronts Tony with a gun about why he loves her so much and a Sosa assassin shoots Gina but Tony ends up getting shot dead by Sosa’s army of assassins.

Scarface told in three acts that detail Montana’s ascension to paradise, his stay in the heaven, and his eventual descent from grace. At a whopping one hundred and seventy mins, the film never outstay its welcome because each act is told at a steady pace on its own. The act is so that the Cuban’s may feel even more uncertain. The middle act shows Montana reveling in his new way of life and taking the actions that could eventually lead to his downfall. he lives a life of excess, his character would be taken into the stratosphere of the inane towards the climax. When you are this insane, the only place to go is up. Or down.

The view of this empire of drugs dealing is not different than that of a carefully political picture. Every character is part of a web of lies and deceit who try to mask it with a wide smile and promise of a better tomorrow. At the same time that these promises are done, seriously diversions are calculated by each character to advance themselves. This is a converse political organization which came from screenwriter Oliver Stone, who treats these empires with the same respect as a legitimate government. No character is passed off as heroic, but several try to get across that they are not the only villains in the world. Their only problem is that they have trouble masking it in a world dominated by villains: politicians, bankers, etc.

Pacino, though, is the one whose excess brings Scarface to a different level of praise as an instant cult classic with feet insoles. With a accent (that I have been told is not particularly accurate), Pacino renders even the most dramatic scenes practically laughable. His anger was fuel a battle between The Academy and The Razzies. He creates a character that is a liar, but with morals. Conniving, but with a sense of loyalty. His contradict one another was frequently that it should come as no surprise to the viewer that Montana becomes his own enemy.