Possibly the most misinterpreted film of the last thirty years. Oliver Stone's script presents Tony Montana as an indictment on the pathway to success. It's a brother piece to Wall Street, examining the lack of morals and conniving attitude required to quickly amass cash. It then shows how Montana completely isolates himself from anyone who could help his self-destruction almost a geek tragedy.
The problem is that DePalma shoots the film as a gaudy monument to excess and Pacino finds an odd vein of machismo in Montana which turns him into an aspirational character of sorts. Instead of looking at Montana and seeing him as a critique people looked at Montana as a justification of a lifestyle. Whereas other gangster films sort of show the inevitable decline of their characters by having them become fidgety shells of their former self Montana becomes even broader in his final moments.
He's isolated himself and brought about his own destruction but the last half hour is just heightened Montana rather than broken Montana, his wild eyed final moments almost mythological rather than a natural capper to the film.
I still like the film, it’s not my favourite DePalma movie, but I think its power is starting to wane a little. I got bought the DVD for my nineteenth birthday back in 2004 and the main special feature is a documentary called ‘Origin of a Hip-Hop Classic’ in which rap stars talk about how much of an influence it had on them. I think in terms of pop culture it had an enormous effect on the hip-hop scene in the late 80s and early 90s but I think by the 00s the hip-hop scene had started to create its own iconography. You can see stuff like filmography of 50 Cent as a natural evolution from Scarface. As such I think in 2011 Scarface has probably been utterly consumed as a pop culture artefact.
On its own terms its an interesting, if majorly flawed, movie that suffers from a lack of propulsion and some very odd pacing. There doesn't seem to be any overall changes in Montana's circumstances throughout the film and even the triumphant 'Push it to the Limit' montage doesn't really create any sense of prosperity. Montana is a petty thief from Cuba until the chainsaw sequence, then after that he's wearing well cut suits and throwing cash around. There's no real indication of need or desire, it's just something hardwired into him.
