Al Pacino Movie:

Editorial Review:
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 [Region 2] Reviews:
Surreal, Scared and Egregious
2009-12-22 - Brian de Palma stormed my heart back in the mid-seventies when he released Phantom of the Paradise. That unforgettable film represented exactly the kind of feverish extravaganza that I wanted to see at that time of my life. Phantom was blatantly absurd, a movie that could be enjoyed only by moviegoers who accepted that it was intentionally unbelievable, a blatantly absurd, feverish and surreal dream made with passion and conviction.

It is a long journey from the risky, outside mood of Phantom to this mainstream video with its blatant appeal to the American moviegoers craving for fare that offers unadulterated visions of money, violence and sex. Nevertheless, I always enjoy watching this movie.

Perhaps Scarface can't be fully appreciated unless you have first seen Phantom of the Paradise. From the swirling camerawork in Al Pacino's crazed and brilliant opening scene through the Tarantino-topping violence of the final shootout, everything in this movie pushes us beyond the place where we can sit back in dispassionate comfort. The point here is that no decent person can sit through this movie without feeling uncomfortable. A naïve viewer might think this is simply an exceptionally wild violence and sexual ridden romp, but the point here is that every scene in this movie is calculated to take matters to extremes, to push beyond the boundaries of the real world.

Tarantino and Oliver Stone get the credit for making movies that intentionally court a surreal degree of violence -- in Tarantino's case for the fun of it, and in Stone's case as a protest against the American obsession with destruction. Yet this movie shows that de Palma was there well before them. Like Natural Born Killers or the Kill Bill movies, the camera never sits still in this movie, and the violence is intentionally taken into an unreal realm of the imagination. Egregious consumption, egregious violence, and a disturbing sexual ambiance are captured by de Palma's careening camera and thrust in the viewer's face, making us squirm in our seats, unable to turn away from what simultaneously repulses and fascinates us.

Personally, I don't think there is any need to make this movie again. De Palma got out in front of his audience and made a movie that was panned when it shipped, but which neither audiences nor critics have been able to ignore since. In many ways, Scarface makes both Natural Born Killers and the Kill Bill movies redundant, mere remakes of what de Palma laid down in the mid-eighties.

The dark side of America is captured on the screen by this extravagant production that left me stunned when I first saw it, back when I was much younger and my blood ran much hotter than it does today. Al Pacino gives an exalted performance that is simultaneously absurd and brilliant. The same is true of de Palma, who dazzles us while eliciting gasps of laughter and shock while pushing us beyond our tolerance for any number of things. To say that this film is too violent, too sexual and too hard too believe is only to reiterate de Palma's purpose in making this production. Watch this movie when you have a craving for the extreme, when you want to analyze how a talented director performs sleight of hand effects, and when you want to see the movie that lay the groundwork for the careers of contemporary directors like Tarentino. Watch this movie when you want to contemplate the dark side of America, when you want to watch an actor go the distance and then travel half as far again just for the heck of it, and watch this movie if you are willing to let your demons out to dance. Just don't watch this movie if you want to take it literally as a Hollywood entertainment.

This is a movie about bad people doing very bad and very destructive things. It is so egregious, that I'm sure it had the opposite effect that its critics suppose. Young people who saw this movie while growing up probably left the theatre or TV screen convinced that nothing is crazier than taking drugs and running around on your wife. But to ascribe a moral purpose to the movie is to undermine its fundamentally anarchic spirit. Go back to Phantom of the Paradise if you want to understand the movie. The point is that it takes conventional movie ideas and pushes them beyond the extreme and into the absurd.


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