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List Price: $12.98 | | Label: Universal Studios
Salesrank: 11642
Released: January 17, 2006 |
| Our Price: $6.84 |
| Used Price: $2.03 |
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MPAA Rating: R (Restricted)
Media: DVD |
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Editorial Review:
Brian De Palma's blood-and-sun-drenched saga of a Cuban deportees rise to the top of Miami's cocaine business has become something of a popular classic since its release; it's been referenced in rap songs and subsequent gangster movies and quoted the world over. Despite this lovefest with the dialogue, the films brutal violence and lack of positive characters still make it controversial and disliked by certain critics. Al Pacino stars as Tony Montana, whose intelligence, guts, and ambition help him skyrocket from dishwasher to the top of a criminal empire but whose eventual paranoia and incestuous desire for his kid sister (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio) prove his undoing. Michelle Pfeiffer plays Tonys neglected coke-addicted trophy wife, and Steven Bauer is his concerned friend. F. Murray Abraham, Robert Loggia, and Paul Shenar are some of Tonys sleazy business partners and potential killers. Oliver Stone wrote the expletive-packed screenplay, based on Howard Hawkss 1932 version--which was ostensibly about Al Capone and starred Paul Muni and George Raft. The synth-heavy Giorgio Moroder score expertly evokes the drug-fueled decadence of 1980s Miami, and De Palma provides several of his elaborate set pieces, including a horrific show stopper in a motel room with a chain saw.
Description of Scarface:
This sprawling epic of bloodshed and excess, Brian De Palma's update of the classic 1932 crime drama by Howard Hawks, sparked controversy over its outrageous violence when released in 1983. Scarface is a wretched, fascinating car wreck of a movie, starring Al Pacino as a Cuban refugee who rises to the top of Miami's cocaine-driven underworld, only to fall hard into his own deadly trap of addiction and inevitable assassination. Scripted by Oliver Stone and running nearly three hours, it's the kind of film that can simultaneously disgust and amaze you (critic Pauline Kael wrote "this may be the only action picture that turns into an allegory of impotence"), with vivid supporting roles for Steven Bauer, Michelle Pfeiffer, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, and Robert Loggia. Universal's special edition digital video disc includes a documentary about the making of the film that features numerous interviews and several deleted scenes. --Jeff Shannon
Scarface Reviews:
he got it all and died next 
2009-12-10 - great gangsta movie VERY FEW compare to this its a perfect action thriller and it gets better and better as the movie progresses
excellent shoot em up at the end
A classic,classic!
2009-09-29 - It would be hard to over-compliment this film. So I will not try, but it probably should be seen by students, high school and above, just to get one aspect of our society in perspective.
We move so rapidly on to new trends and new dramatic situations in our country that we forget what some older films portraying a segment of our culture has to tell us. This film tells us a lot!!
Drug dealing induces social schizophrenia
2009-09-28 - Don't let yourself be lured by the picture of the poor Cubans under the dictatorship of Fidel Castro who is kicking them out of the island. It is hinted these exiled people are far from being clean. They are the dregs of society and coming directly out of prison. Scarface is no exception. He is scum and scum he will remain till the end. The Americans are not lured at all, at least the police, but they are under strong pressure to provide these poor refugees with "libertad". As soon as Scarface gets that freedom he starts his business, from scratch and from the bottom, but he knows how to climb fast and how to get rid of obstacles and his road is punctuated with bodies or parts of bodies. In no time at all he is the boss and he is able to realize his ambition: millions from the opening Colombian route (cocaine of course) whereas those he eliminated to get in their place were only making a few grands. But the story of this man is the story of a paranoid and schizophrenic sociopath. He climbs to power and cannot see he has to share that power with newcomers. He defends his territory like a lion or a grizzly bear and his power becomes a war, a constant war in which everything and everyone is destroyed. That makes a perfect action film full of violence as if it were loaded with cocaine, but with a more human dimension in the character of Scarface himself who is impersonated marvelously by Al Pacino. The acting is so good that it transcends the pure bloody violence of the images and the plot. We can admire how Brian de Palma paints and composes his character to make him so true to what we can believe. He becomes a masterpiece in that psychological line in spite of the total absence of any other depth, social, cultural, political or whatever.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne, University Paris 12 Créteil, CEGID
SCARFACE
2009-09-22 - I seen this movie a couple of year ago..I can't get enough of it..very good movie..even though it is brutal and violent..it's still a classic...2 thumbs up
Brian De Palma's SCARFACE
2009-09-08 - This is probably De Palma's best film and one of Al Pacino's best as well. Maybe he was better in the Godfather, but Scarface was more entertaining to watch. The film was a departure for De Palma, who tends to film Hitchcock type films, until now, like Dressed to Kill and Blow Out.
