Scarface

Scarface I first saw while living in a Latin American country, appropriately enough. I was far too young to be watching such a movie, but the brutal, shocking impact of Scarface left a lasting impression. In the intervening decades, it has become a cult classic, popular with hip-hop fans as a demonstration of the "rags to riches to ultimate self-destruction" of a hyperviolent gangster, a saga celebrated in gangster rap lyrics. (Or at least often recounted.)

The film's scenes are so cliche now, so kitsch, they have seeped into the mass cultural consciousness. Like Star Wars, Scarface is an iconic film. "Say hello to my lil' fren!" is a catchphrase employed humorously, as when a popular sketch show portrayed a Tony Montana clone holding a skunk (in that sketch, the slurred, broken English term "lil'" became "stinky"), and Al Pacino's manic, coke-infused performance is the stuff of bad impersonations. Tony Montana is a cultural icon just as much as Han Solo, for entirely different reasons.

Tony (Al Pacino) and Manny (the handsome and charming Steven Bauer) are a couple of Cuban refugees from Castro's "Mariel Boatlift," a present received from the famed dictator in 1980, wherein thousands and thousands of refugees were allowed to flee to the United States--along with the dregs of Castro's mental homes and prison colonies. The film begins with Castro, proceeds to documentary footage of the refugees leaving the boat, and proceeds to an interview immigration gives Tony, where he is cocky and belligerent. We get a feel for a tough, unlovely, uncompromising man right away.

Freedom Town

We're next in a refugee camp, "Freedom Town," wherein the plot closes in around Tony and Manny, and their relationship as comrades or "brothers." It's an odd juxtaposition, the short, angry, bellicose, and psychopathic Tony, with the tall, good-looking, easygoing charmer Manny, but, somehow, it is convincing. They seem to share a murky, ill-defined past as both soldiers in the same platoon and fellow inmates--this is hinted at (as is Tony's weird, fractured relationship with his mother (Míriam Colón) and sister, Gina (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio) but is never elaborated on). We know only that Tony's father "was a Yankee. He from United States," and that he "died." We also know Daddy used to take little Tony to see "James Cagney, Humphrey Bogart." In other words, gangster movies.

Manny sets up a deal wherein, during the cover of a riot, Tony assassinates a communist refugee named Rebenga (Roberto Contreras), securing for both them and their friend Angel (Pepe Serna) green cards and jobs working for Frank (Robert Loggia) a Miami drug kingpin who lives a lavish lifestyle. Frank is garrulous, happy-go-lucky, and hence, grown too "soft" to remain long in the business he started. He sets Manny and Tony up as underlings, but the scheming Omar (played with reptilian charm by F. Murray Abraham, who did an equally impressive, iconic turn as Salieri in the other big film of that year, Amadeus), who hates Tony, sets them both up for a run-in with murderous drug pushers in a scene that is so notorious it has passed over into cinematic infamy (it involves a shower and a chainsaw). Omar eventually gets his comeuppance early in the film, and Tony begins making deals with Sosa (Paul Shenar), a Bolivian drug overlord with high political connections who is as dangerous as a snake, Frank observes.

Enter Elvira (Michelle Pfeiffer), a pale, haughty, ice-blonde cocaine princess who is Frank's main squeeze. Tony takes a liking to Elvira, and this, along with his new dealmaking with Sosa, enrages Frank, to the point that he tries to have Tony rubbed out in a mass shooting incident at their favorite nightclub. I can't really, stress to you how violent this film is (it was in the Guinness Book of World Records for being the most violent film of all time, at one point.)

Tony survives, kills Frank, takes over his business as the new Boss, and marries Elvira. While this is happening, he tries to reconnect with his mother and sister Gina, but Mama is having none of it. When he waltzes in, and tries to hand them a wad of money, Mama asks, "Who did you kill to get this, Antonio?" Mama knows all too well who her son is, and how he operates in the underworld.

Scarface | Behind the Scenes

Gina still loves Tony, though, and her naivety is touching, as she doesn't seem to realize the terminal, blood pathway that Tony has chosen, and where it will ultimately lead him and anyone close to him. She begins to associate with him, more and more, and other Miami organized crime figures.

Tony is obsessed to the point of psychosis with making sure Gina stays virginal, and "pure," and beats up her boyfriend. Then, unknown to Tony, MAnny becomes her boyfriend. These people all circle down inexorably to their tragic fates.

The wealth comes rolling in, allowing Tony, Elvira, and all to live like royalty, poor Latin American immigrants who, all of a sudden, through the violent world of Miami drug dealing, can live a lifestyle beyond their wildest dreams. But, Elvira reminds them at one point, "We're not winners. We're losers." And Tony asks, "Is this what it's all about?" There is never any real happiness for these people, any sense of peace or rest, in a world where you are constantly watching your back, never certain when your number is going to come up.

Tony's betrayal of Sosa finally seals his fate.

Scarface is a film with an ambiguous political subtext. On the one hand, it is understandable that Tony hates the communist regime of Castro, the oppressive iron heel of authoritarianism, and the grinding poverty of the Latin American country from which he hails. "I kill a communist for fun," he says early in the film. On the other, his pursuit of the "American Dream" via a life of organized crime leads to his ultimate downfall. There are overtones of Shakespearean tragedy here, especially in his killing of Frank and resultant ascendancy to the throne, and the picture painted of his increasingly unhinged and utterly mad and uncompromising, self-destructive, coke-addled self is haunting, shocking. This move is a brutal blow to the consciousness of the viewer, a time capsule of an era (with a terrific score by Metropolis and Flashdance composer Giorgio Moroder), and an epic saga of the meteoric rise and bloody fall of a modern warlord. It's punch after brutal, bloody punch, and it is not to be missed as far as an exemplar of cinematic excellence.

The World is Yours

When I saw Scarface for the first time (and I have seen it many, many times since then), I was living in Panama, Central America, on a military post that no longer exists. A colonial, I suppose, technically, I knew full well the horrible poverty that many Panamanians lived in, including an area called "Hollywood," a place ironically on the drive to the American shopping center for military families. It was a slum with houses that had thatched roofs, where filthy children played in dirty water, and where people bathed in the open. In Scarface, one may not sympathize with the cold, distant, violent killer Tony, but one can at least, having seen such a place as "Hollywood", understand him.

"The world is yours," says an advertising blimp at the midway mark of the film (it is quite long), and Tony remembers this line. When Manny asks him at one point, "And what is coming to you?" (or something to the effect that he wants to know, exactly, what Tony thinks he deserves out of life), Tony answers, "The world, Chico. And everything in it."

He wants it all. Sadly, he didn't know it would destroy him.

Directed by Brian DePalma, from a screenplay by Oliver Stone.