Cast: Al Pacino, Michelle Pfeiffer
Director: Brian de Palma
Screenplay: Oliver Stone
Producer: Universal Pictures
Running-time: 170 mins
Genre: Crime/Drama
Country: USA
It can be easy to dismiss Brian de Palma’s 1983 update of the crime classic Scarface as nihilistic, ultra-violent, and super-charged with sadism and gross abandon that it’s almost impossible not to flinch at the sight of Al Pacino’s Tony Montana dipping his entire nose to snort a barrel-load of cocaine heaped on top of his dark-mahogany desk, or perhaps in a much worse case scenario, molests the audience’s attention by viscerally showing a full-on gore galore chainsaw sequence that could have been righteously banned when Production Code was still the Hollywood rule of thumb. But obviously, this is not the 1930’s. It’s the 80s, the age of video nasties, pop culture excess and post-punk, neon-tinged, god-awful decade of fashion – in other words, everything goes. So in De Palma’s update of Howard Hawk’s black-and-white gangster film of the same title (‘update’ is used here, as this isn’t a remake as much as a reworking), we see an apotheosis that would soon resonate in a decade of filmmaking and popular culture; flamboyant cinematography, using day-glo colours in its misé-en-scene, montage cuts bopping to the soundtrack (this would later inform countless of music videos), and lots and lots of violence that would make the 70's look sparkly clean. Perhaps there has never been a film as gratuitously violent in mainstream Hollywood since Coppola’s The Godfather and Hooper’s 1974 original horror The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
It can also be mistaken that the violence here is glorified, with gorgeously mounted camera flourishes, a signature style in most of De Palma’s oeuvre. Watch the chainsaw sequence in a motel room, as the camera smoothly cranes through windows, hovering over a perfectly composed street and then sweeps back into the room of carnage. Even the final shootout with a drugged-up, fired-up Montana in his wild desperation is filmed in all Grand Guignol glory; dramatic, intense, almost excessively operatic in scale, with Montana being portrayed as a contradiction – a tragic anti-hero figure, but at the same time, an icon of the gun-and-gangster culture. It’s not a surprise then that this meaning has been misjudged by many demoralised youth, where Montana’s hedonistic excess permeates and highly influences the hip-hop ‘bling-bling’ culture, taken as a God of the cool. What this generation have largely misunderstood is that Scarface, for all its sadistic portrayal of violence and thirst for power, money, sex and drugs, is actually an indictment of all the things the film tries to embody. And in the tragic figure of Montana is a result of a palpable excess and human greed, his rise from his local dishwasher to the upper echelon of Miami mafiadom and subsequent fall a cautionary tale to anyone with unchecked ambitions. And there is not a better actor that personifies the unhinged, gleeful amorality of Montana other than Al Pacino, who gives a magnificent, grandstanding powerhouse of a performance, filled with a potent cocktail of swaggering bravado, disturbing sneer and spitting motor-mouth expletives – a bordering megalomaniac, who can both bring gravitas and irony to even a capricious greeting such as ‘Say hello to my little friend’ whilst holding out an M16A1 to a bunch of gunslingers.
It can also be mistaken that the violence here is glorified, with gorgeously mounted camera flourishes, a signature style in most of De Palma’s oeuvre. Watch the chainsaw sequence in a motel room, as the camera smoothly cranes through windows, hovering over a perfectly composed street and then sweeps back into the room of carnage. Even the final shootout with a drugged-up, fired-up Montana in his wild desperation is filmed in all Grand Guignol glory; dramatic, intense, almost excessively operatic in scale, with Montana being portrayed as a contradiction – a tragic anti-hero figure, but at the same time, an icon of the gun-and-gangster culture. It’s not a surprise then that this meaning has been misjudged by many demoralised youth, where Montana’s hedonistic excess permeates and highly influences the hip-hop ‘bling-bling’ culture, taken as a God of the cool. What this generation have largely misunderstood is that Scarface, for all its sadistic portrayal of violence and thirst for power, money, sex and drugs, is actually an indictment of all the things the film tries to embody. And in the tragic figure of Montana is a result of a palpable excess and human greed, his rise from his local dishwasher to the upper echelon of Miami mafiadom and subsequent fall a cautionary tale to anyone with unchecked ambitions. And there is not a better actor that personifies the unhinged, gleeful amorality of Montana other than Al Pacino, who gives a magnificent, grandstanding powerhouse of a performance, filled with a potent cocktail of swaggering bravado, disturbing sneer and spitting motor-mouth expletives – a bordering megalomaniac, who can both bring gravitas and irony to even a capricious greeting such as ‘Say hello to my little friend’ whilst holding out an M16A1 to a bunch of gunslingers.
You may call Scarface as nihilistic, brutal, ultra-violent and something of a sadistic gangster flick, but what does one exactly expect of the Miami drug-and-crime trade underworld portrayal? For at the heart of De Palma’s film is a dark, decaying grandeur, a ruthless satire of the bling culture, and a tragedy in Shakespearean proportions rooted with an iconic, bravura central performance by Pacino.
Review by The Moviejerk © Janz
