Scarface (1983)
Country: US
Technical: col/scope 170m
Director: Brian de Palma
Cast: Al Pacino, Steven Bauer, Michelle Pfeiffer, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, Robert Loggia
Synopsis:
A Cuban hoodlum arrives in Miami with the boat exiles in 1980, and sets about establishing himself in the drug-running business. His straight talk initially earns him preferment, but an undisciplined streak proves his undoing.
Review:
The rise and fall of an American gangster, as envisioned by producer Martin Bregman, is in fact nothing of the kind, since he is even more an immigrant than Michael Corleone. Meanwhile De Palma and his scenarist Oliver Stone riff on Howard Hawks's classic, updating lines and situations wholesale. An air of unreality hangs over the whole enterprise: one imagines if Sidney Lumet had done it, as was intended, there would have been far more emphasis on the law enforcement and finance side of things. As it is, it gives the director the opportunity to cut loose in a series of violent episodes involving a chainsaw, sub-machine guns in a crowded nightclub, and a spectacular finale à la Wild Bunch designed to set the audience cheering for our psychotic anti-hero. Pacino is mesmerising, of course, but his Tony Montana is as repellent as Muni's was delinquent, and rarely elicits sympathy. De Palma's camera cranes back and forth, and Moroder's soundtrack casts a pall of 80s chic over the whole. A film that always left a nasty taste in the mouth, but that has aged rather well, its excesses long since superceded. It is, however, dreadfully long.
Country: US
Technical: col/scope 170m
Director: Brian de Palma
Cast: Al Pacino, Steven Bauer, Michelle Pfeiffer, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, Robert Loggia
Synopsis:
A Cuban hoodlum arrives in Miami with the boat exiles in 1980, and sets about establishing himself in the drug-running business. His straight talk initially earns him preferment, but an undisciplined streak proves his undoing.
Review:
The rise and fall of an American gangster, as envisioned by producer Martin Bregman, is in fact nothing of the kind, since he is even more an immigrant than Michael Corleone. Meanwhile De Palma and his scenarist Oliver Stone riff on Howard Hawks's classic, updating lines and situations wholesale. An air of unreality hangs over the whole enterprise: one imagines if Sidney Lumet had done it, as was intended, there would have been far more emphasis on the law enforcement and finance side of things. As it is, it gives the director the opportunity to cut loose in a series of violent episodes involving a chainsaw, sub-machine guns in a crowded nightclub, and a spectacular finale à la Wild Bunch designed to set the audience cheering for our psychotic anti-hero. Pacino is mesmerising, of course, but his Tony Montana is as repellent as Muni's was delinquent, and rarely elicits sympathy. De Palma's camera cranes back and forth, and Moroder's soundtrack casts a pall of 80s chic over the whole. A film that always left a nasty taste in the mouth, but that has aged rather well, its excesses long since superceded. It is, however, dreadfully long.
Country: US
Technical: col/scope 170m
Director: Brian de Palma
Cast: Al Pacino, Steven Bauer, Michelle Pfeiffer, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, Robert Loggia
Synopsis:
A Cuban hoodlum arrives in Miami with the boat exiles in 1980, and sets about establishing himself in the drug-running business. His straight talk initially earns him preferment, but an undisciplined streak proves his undoing.
Review:
The rise and fall of an American gangster, as envisioned by producer Martin Bregman, is in fact nothing of the kind, since he is even more an immigrant than Michael Corleone. Meanwhile De Palma and his scenarist Oliver Stone riff on Howard Hawks's classic, updating lines and situations wholesale. An air of unreality hangs over the whole enterprise: one imagines if Sidney Lumet had done it, as was intended, there would have been far more emphasis on the law enforcement and finance side of things. As it is, it gives the director the opportunity to cut loose in a series of violent episodes involving a chainsaw, sub-machine guns in a crowded nightclub, and a spectacular finale à la Wild Bunch designed to set the audience cheering for our psychotic anti-hero. Pacino is mesmerising, of course, but his Tony Montana is as repellent as Muni's was delinquent, and rarely elicits sympathy. De Palma's camera cranes back and forth, and Moroder's soundtrack casts a pall of 80s chic over the whole. A film that always left a nasty taste in the mouth, but that has aged rather well, its excesses long since superceded. It is, however, dreadfully long.