Scarface
Al Pacino gives us cinema’s most unforgettable drug dealer
Directed By: Brian De Palma
Other Notable Films From De Palma: Carrie, Carlito’s Way, Mission: Impossible
Starring: Al Pacino, Michelle Pfeiffer, Steven Bauer, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, Robert Loggia
Screenplay By: Oliver Stone, in a remake of the 1932 film of the same name
Movie Synopsis: A Cuban refugee becomes a cocaine kingpin in 1980s Miami.
Signature Line: “Say hello to my little friend.”
THE INTRODUCTION
An accounting of time, and people, and context
There are no accidents in Scarface. Everything you see has a purpose. And I don’t just mean the stuff that happens in the movie—I mean the particulars of its parts as well. To wit:
Scarface consists of three separate sections. There’s the first, in which Tony Montana, a Cuban refugee who arrives in America during the Mariel boatlift in 1980, hustles his way from low-level crime grunt all the way up to successor of a potential cocaine empire in Miami. There’s the final section, in which Tony suffers through a seemingly endless string of bad events as his world unravels, culminating in a calamitous 17 minutes that ends with Tony, his sister, his best friend, and his men all dead. And there’s the middle section, which stitches together those disparate parts, showing Tony as he rockets his way to power while settling into the role of drug kingpin.
But here’s the thing: Beyond what we see onscreen during those sections, their specific time allotments are also meant relay a specific idea. And what I mean is:
The first section of Scarface is the longest of the trio; it spans 103 of the movie’s 170-minute runtime. And that makes sense because climbing your way up from a refugee camp to a position of true criminal power and prestige is a thing that takes a lot of time. The third section of the movie is shorter than the first (60 minutes), which makes sense because it’s always easier for something (or someone) to be torn down than it is to build it up. And the middle section—the only part of the movie where things are purely good and hassle-free for Tony, as conveyed via a literal success montage set to Paul Engemann’s synth-pop ode to excess, “Push It To The Limit”—is BARELY THREE MINUTES LONG, because that’s how life typically works for the head of a criminal organization: The good part is gonna be very good, but it’s also gonna be very short.
And so I say again: There are no accidents in Scarface. There are stabbings, and shootouts, and a chainsaw death, and even a helicopter hanging.
But no accidents.
THE VIEWING
A timestamped rewatch of Scarface
1:39: The movie begins with archival footage of the Mariel boatlift, including a clip of Fidel Castro giving a political speech where he’s yelling the exact same thing I yell at Saltgrass Steakhouse when the waiter starts suggesting what vegetables would go well with our entrees.
4:24: Al Pacino is here. He plays Tony Montana, an extremely charming and ambitious Cuban refugee who will eventually build himself into one of the most powerful drug dealers in Miami. And listen, let’s go ahead and get this sorted up top:
Often when someone revisits an older movie and sees a non-Latino actor playing a Latino character, they’ll be like, “Umm, is this okay? This doesn’t seem okay. They should’ve gotten someone who was actually Latino for this role, right?” And while I understand (and appreciate) that impulse, I’m here to tell you: It’s generally okay for someone who isn’t Latino to play one, SO LONG AS that person is exceptionally cool while doing so. It’s the Razor Ramon Rule.
Remember Razor Ramon, the Cuban-American wrestler from Miami who became a WWF superstar in the early ‘90s? He was so undeniably magnetic and captivating and cool that when we (the “we” here being “Latinos”) found out he was actually just a regular white guy from Maryland, we all just sort of shrugged and were like, “Big whoop. He fucking rules. He’s one of us forever,” and then adopted him into the family. That’s how the Razor Ramon Rule works. If you’re cool enough, you get the thumbs up from us.
Lou Diamond Phillips as Richie Valens in La Bamba (AND Angel Guzman in Stand and Deliver)? Razor Ramon Rule.1 Jenette Goldstein as Private Vasquez in Aliens? Razor Ramon Rule. John Turturro as Jesus Quintana in The Big Lebowski? Razor Ramon Rule. Natalie Wood as Maria in West Side Story, Viggo Mortenen as Lalin in Carlito’s Way, Cliff Curtis as Smiley in Training Day, Hank Azaria as Agador in The Birdcage, and Catherine Zeta-Jones anytime she played a Latina in anything? All Razor Ramon’d.
4:25: P.S. You know who wasn’t Razor Ramon’d? Fucking Rob Schneider as Ramon Lopez Stockburn in The Ridiculous 6. What a disaster that was. It’s the closest we got to a Mexico vs. America war in decades.
8:36: Steven Bauer is here. He plays Manny, Tony’s best friend. I love Bauer in this role a lot. He’s such a funny character. Tony is, like, a fundamentally corrupt and corroded person. He’s bad, through and through. Manny, though… Manny’s a criminal only by circumstance. His first compulsion is never to reach for power; it’s always to reach for a good time. Were he left to his own devices, he’d just be a proto fuckboy guy chasing girls around Miami.
10:02: Two things to mention here:
This is what every gym class in San Antonio looks like. It’s just 18 Mexicans on a shoddy basketball court playing 9-on-9 in jeans. Every game to 11 takes 55 minutes because it’s virtually impossible to score on account of all the flagrant foul-happy Mexicans. It’s awesome.
By the end of the movie, Tony will prove to be a complete psycho directly responsible for the deaths of more than two dozen people people. That’s why it’s so funny to me that he kills time at a refugee camp by playing pickup basketball right here. Like, I just really love that he has hobbies and interests outside of dealing drugs and murdering people. I wonder who his favorite team was? I bet he was a Sixers guy. He seems like a Sixers guy. He probably fucking LOVED Andrew Toney.
14:07: Tony (and several of his associates, including Manny) negotiated with a tied-in drug dealer to get help securing their green cards in exchange for them killing some guy the drug dealer wanted dead. Which is why…
