Scarface

Rating:
Summary: All-Time-Classic
Review: To the Guy who wrote this: " this movie sucks, November 8, 2003
Reviewer: A viewer from Forest Hills, NY United States
this is one of the worst movies ever made, pacino is a disgrace to actors. "

I just gotta say something 2 you.It's hard 4 Me not 2 CURSE right now, but you should watch your danish dogma movies and bury yourself, because you don't understand NOTHING about Good Movies, Filmmakers and Actors.
Get Lost Baby.

To all other people reading this, Scarface is of course a MustHave and Al Pacino proved that he is one of Top 5 Actors EVER!
Get this Movie if you really don't have it YET!
Peace

Rating:
Summary: this movie sucks
Review: this is one of the worst movies ever made, pacino is a disgrace to actors.

Rating:
Summary: a masterpiece!
Review: Brian De Palma's classic tale of the rise and fall of Tony Montana,a poor cuban immigrant who come to the U.S. at the height of Castro's reign in Cuba is a masterpiece built on the cocaine frenzy of the late '70's and early '80's.with appearances by legends like Al Pacino,Michelle Pfieffer and F. Murray Abraham to name a few,Scarface is intense and reaches across the borders of race and class to expose a much deeper current and a truth about all people.

Rating:
Summary: Gangland film that's never too old to watch
Review: Al Pacino along with Robert De Niro are to me, 2 of the greatest actors in Hollywood since the 70s. Al Pacino is brilliant and unforgettable in this one (as he also was in Serpico) as the Cuban refugee who is uneducated, ambitious and without scruples. Mastrantonio acted out the role as sister so well, and the hint of a potentially incestuous relationship between them two was apparent from the start - when I saw the scene when Pacino visits his mum and sister for the first time in America, when he was hugging and kissing his sister for a bit too long and a bit too affectionately, I thought she must have been his girlfriend from Cuba! I never realised they were siblings until his mother was shouting at him to get lost because she "doesn't want a son like him", that I realised these two weren't lovers. Such was the unspoken but truly well-played roles that Pacino and Mastrantonio took and this brilliance lingered on for the rest of the film. Michelle Pfeiffer too, is every bit the convincing bitchy coke-addicted vamp who is the object of 2 prominent syndicate members' desires. She was younger then, but she stood out.

The movie is fast, quite unpredictable at times, and full of guns, drugs and bloodshed. Not to mention its soundtrack and theme (and possibly storyline) must have inspired the idea behind one of the most popular Playstation 2 games on the market today - "Grand Theft Auto" - because most of the songs in the PS2 game were the exact same 80s tracks that were played in this movie on and off. I am really impressed by this movie. Normally I don't go for gangster flicks, but in this case and in the cases of certain other Al Pacino and Robert De Niro gangland flicks... I make exceptions. I love these 2 actors!

Rating:
Summary: Compelling
Review: I missed this intentionally when it came out in 1983 believing it to be another version of the Al Capone story. It is, sort of. Of course Al Pacino would be brilliant as Al Capone and demand every square inch of the screen and get it. And he was and he did. And director Brian DePalma would spray the screen in scarlet, and he did. However this updated and revised version set in Miami from a script by Oliver Stone is very much worth watching even though it's almost three hours long.

First of all, Al Pacino is riveting as Tony Montana, a Cuban refugee released from prison by Fidel Castro in 1980 who arrives in Florida with a yearning to rule the world and a huge chip on his shoulder. His character is an extreme version of the "live fast, die young" species, the kind of guy who takes extreme chances and fears nothing. It is a shame that it is not obvious that for every one of the Tony Montanas in the world who actually made it to the top of the cocaine pile, there are thousands who weren't able to dodge the bullets and died not just young, but very young.

Second, there is not a dead spot in the whole movie. Stone's action-driven script and DePalma's focused direction compel our attention. If you can stand the bestial mentality and the animalistic flash culture of the drug lords and their sleazy world, you might even want to see this twice.

What I found myself watching closely was Michelle Pfeiffer at twenty-something, strikingly beautiful and totally degenerate as the cocaine-addled moll. Also very much worth watching was Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio as Tony Montana's sister Gina. The big brother/little sister incestuous theme (from the original Scarface of 1931 starring Paul Muni and directed by Howard Hawks) was craftily prepared and reached a striking climax (if you will) in the scene in which Gina tells Montana that he must "have her" (that's not exactly the words she used) since he won't let anybody else have her. The touch of necrophilia that followed was perhaps gratuitous.

What I loved was the way DePalma reminded us again and again of how trapped the characters were by their desperate indulgences, the expensive liquor, the cigars, the cocaine, the stacks of money that took hours to count by machine. The scene in which Pfeiffer takes a snort of cocaine, a puff of a cigarette and a swallow of booze one after the other as the only thing she knows how to do in this world (with the white powder still on her nostrils) was wonderful in its piteous effect. I also liked the scene in which Montana, seated in his black leather chair with his initials in gold lettering, surrounded by his security video screens, dives into a pile of cocaine and comes up with it on his nose. Reminds me of the old doper saying, "Too much is never enough."

The shoot 'em up finale of course was much, much overdone and about as realistic as a John Wayne barroom fight, but I loved the way Pacino played Montana near the end as a kind of paranoid Napoleon, the little guy who wanted to rule the world now finished and insane. Note, by the way, in how many scenes Pacino played a very vigorous persona sitting down.

In the final analysis this is a morality tale, a kind of very flashy "crime does not pay" saga not because the cops will get you (they don't) but because the life itself will corrupt you beyond anything human. Those who live by the gun will die by the gun, and there is no security among murders and thieves.

Rating:
Summary: Wow
Review: Excellent, excellent DVD. Say what you will about the update on quality, i think they did a great job. Moreover, this is perhaps the most well-acted film I've ever seen. Tony Montana is the first role that comes to mind when I think of Al Pacino, probably because he does such a damn good job playing a crazy drugged up gangster.

Rating:
Summary: Finally!
Review: The reason to buy this DVD is simple: one of the most influential films of the 20th century has finally been released in a newly restored, pristine transfer. As an owner of the original DVD release, I can testify that the difference is like night and day.

With every viewing, I come to appreciate Brian DePalma's Scarface more and more. Although not perfect, there is much more right with this film than wrong. It helps to compare it with its countless imitations: where most subsequent crime films rush headlong from one bloody gunfight to the next, Scarface takes its time. Its languid, gliding camera has a certain elegance in the way it reveals story points without relying on clunky Dick-and-Jane dialog or overwrought MTV pyrotechnics. A prime example is the infamous scene where Tony Montana (Al Pacino) attemps to buy two kilos of cocaine from some Coloumbians for his boss, Frank Lopez (Robert Loggia). Watch the way the camera drifts from the Miami Beach hotel room, across a peaceful sun-drenched street, over to the car where Tony's associates are waiting for him, then slowly back up to the bathroom window, where the sound of the idling chainsaw grows louder. Creepy. Insinuating. It's comparable to the best work of Hitchcock - a day-lit nightmare where the ordinary becomes sinister. Watch closely as the Columbian dismembers Tony's friend limb by limb. In spite of the scene's reputation, we never actually see what's happening. Like the shower murder in Psycho, all the violence is implied - so strongly, in fact, that DePalma had to fight the MPAA in a well-publicized battle to keep Scarface from receiving an X rating.

It's interesting the way that the improved picture and sound seem to contribute to every aspect of the film. Subtleties in Pacino's largely unsubtle performance become clear. We can better see what he does with his face in those famously shadowy close-ups; the way he registers what he's thinking privately, even as he swaggers with exaggerated bravado. Where once it seemed he was over-acting at times, it is now apparent that he was carefully playing his character's machismo against a darker undercurrent of great hunger - so intense that it defies articulation. Tony Montana's great tragedy is his utter lack of self-knowlege. Beneath the clouds of cordite and testosterone, he is so painfully needy that he will draw everyone around him into a decaying orbit of destruction. He is a criminal, but he is not immoral. He is a black hole of a man, a vacuous human being whose desires eclipse whatever soul that a life of deprivation and decay may have left him. He acts without apology, or even much thought. He's an animal in both the best and worst senses of the word. The tragedy is not so much that he is killed at the end - he brings that on himself - it is that so many others, not least the addicts that buy his product, must suffer and die as well. It's downright Shakespearean, but with (lots of) f-words in place of gilded Elizabethan speech.

Once you get past those 160-odd f-variants, Oliver Stone's screenplay begins to seem as thoughtful as it is blunt. The language is harsh, but also truthful, with plenty of quotable lines (though you would not want to quote them in polite company).

The improved sound mix also brings into relief something that I had always looked upon as a liability of Scarface - the very "80's" music score, which had always seemed to me the newer equivalent of those ham-handed "jazz" scores from certain 50's melodramas like Man With the Golden Arm. But now the music seems "dated" more in the way of an early James Bond score; it is appropriate to the era. Were Scarface made now, it would still be a legitimate choice of styles.

The extras are thorough, though the "making of" documentary seems to be a longer version of the one from the original DVD release. There is also a documentary on Scarface's considerable influence on hip-hop music, but I smell an Obvious Plug for a CD of music "inspired" by the film. (The package insert proclaims that it's In Stores Now! from DefJam records.)

In any case, Scarface has finally received its due respect in a form that showcases the late John Alonso's brightly-hued, yet somehow gritty cinematography. Alonso also photographed the sumptuous Chinatown. This DVD is also a tribute to him - a master of light and shadow, whose old-fashioned, hard-lit chiaroscuro images contributed in no small way to Scarface's status as a modern classic.

Rating:
Summary: "Say hello to my little friend..."
Review: Brian De Palma's epic blood soaked remake of the 1932 Paul Muni gangster classic may not have gotten all the critical acclaim in the world, but it stands as a landmark performance of the great Al Pacino. Pacino brings to the screen one of his most well known characters in his career as Tony Montana; a cuban refugee who rises to power in Miami's cocaine underworld. Along with him is his best friend Manny (Steve Bauer) and the two begin working for Frank (Robert Loggia), a slimy, manipulative excess driven drug kingpin whose wife (Michelle Pfeiffer) Tony soon develops an obsession for. Oliver Stone wrote the script and helped make Tony one of the most unforgettable characters in all of American cinema. Scarface has since become a cult classic and contains some of the most memorable lines of dialogue in film, not to mention the most rampant use of profanity that would not be topped for years to come. The only problem I ever had with Scarface was it's length; clocking in at nearly 3 hours, there are times when the film drags, but that is only a minor complaint. All in all, if you want to see one of Al Pacino's finest performances (aside from Devil's Advocate, Dog Day Afternoon, Serpico, or anything beginning with the title The Godfather), then consider Scarface essential viewing, but be warned, this is not a film for all tastes.

Rating:
Summary: very cool movie
Review: This movie is great. I feel the style of the movie outshines the movie itself however. The movie is great also, with the accents and classic lines, and 80s style. The DVD has good features, but I tend to avoid the Def Jam documentary - I don't like seeing rappers lie about themselves "being like" Tony Montana.

Rating:
Summary: THEY COULD HAVE TRIED A LITTLE HARDER
Review: You'd think for the 20th. anniversary of this film they would come up with a better DVD. It is being advertised "with an improved 5.1 sound" but in all honesty, even though the nature of the film lent itself for a great track, the results are terribly, terribly flat. The video itself could have been a lot better also.
I have no beef with the film itself, either you love or hate Al Pacino's way over the top preformance. I happen to find it a riot.
This is a terrible presentation of a rather good film.