I Just Saw

A classic of its genre, Scarface typifies ‘80s materialism in much the same way that the 1932 movie of the same name that it was based on symbolised the Prohibition era. Back then it was booze, now it’s cocaine. Then it was jazz and the Charleston, now it’s big hair and electro-pop. Like all great remakes, it adapts the themes of its predecessor to reflect a new zeitgeist, showing how human ambitions never change even as their cultural contexts do.

Coming in at just under three hours runtime, director Brian de Palma and writer Oliver Stone’s epic follows Cuban Tony Montana (Al Pacino) as he’s ejected by Fidel Castro along with various other criminals, winding up in a Floridian refugee camp before finding work as a dishwasher. But a guy like Montana’s not built to pursue a respectable, lower-middle-class life as an honest emigrant. He wants it all, and so pursues a life climbing the ladder of the cocaine industry. Regardless of what that spells for himself, his best friend Manny Ray (Steven Bauer), mistress Elvira (Michelle Pfeiffer), and sister Gina (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio), of whom he’s overprotective to the point of incestuous fixation.

The movie lives or dies on its main performance, and Al Pacino is an actor who can go so far over the top that he’s flying through space, yet still retain a core of believable personality. Tony Montana is a classic tragic hero, or anti-hero. Destined to be king even when he was washing dishes and scrabbling for small-time jobs, but also just as destined to be pulled from his throne and killed like a wild animal. In that sense, he’s Shakespearean. Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown, we learn from Henry IV, Part II, and that’s equally as true of Miami drug lords as it is of European kings.

The Pacino performance is so central to the film that it’s no wonder efforts to remake or sequel-ise it have come to nothing. In most other hands the Montana character would have become farcical or obnoxious, but although he’s never exactly likeable here (unless you’re young and impressionable), he’s a fascinating locus of bluster and ambition.

He’s a walking embodiment of the dictum “fake it ‘til you make it”. The type of guy who when offered a lucrative small-time gig by a couple of well-connected gangsters doesn’t reflect that he’s a dishwasher who should be grateful for anything they give him, but argues up the price and openly calls them out. A man like that will end up either dead or on top. Or both. It’s a shame that Montana’s preternatural determination and cunning didn’t drive him towards more noble pursuits. In the right context, he could have been a high-powered lawyer or politician.

The film is scored with ‘80s pop hits that underscore the passage of time and involve us in the cultural moment that these characters inhabit. It’s also notorious for its violence, shocking at the time (novelist Kurt Vonnegut famously walked out during the chainsaw scene), building towards a grand tragic climax and last irony; above Tony Montana in the final shot appear these words: THE WORLD IS YOURS.

Rating: 4/4