Scarface

Director: Brian De Palma

Overview

Al Pacino stars as Tony Montana, an exiled Cuban criminal who goes to work for Miami drug lord Robert Loggia. Montana rises to the top of Florida's crime chain, appropriating Loggia's cokehead mistress (Michelle Pfeiffer) in the process. Howard Hawks' "X Marks the Spot" motif in depicting the story line's many murders is dispensed with in the 1983 Scarface; instead, we are inundated with blood by the bucketful, especially in the now-infamous buzz saw scene. One carry-over from the original Scarface is Tony Montana's incestuous yearnings for his sister Gina (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio). The screenplay for the 1983 Scarface was written by Oliver Stone.

Product Details

Release Date:	10/15/2019
UPC:	0191329109281
Original Release:	1983
Rating:	R
Source:	Universal Studios
Format:	Blu-ray
Sales rank:	74,522

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Al Pacino	Tony Montana
Steven Bauer	Manny Ray
Michelle Pfeiffer	Elvira
Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio	Gina
Robert Loggia	Frank Lopez
Miriam Colon	Mama Montana
F. Murray Abraham	Omar
Paul Shenar	Alejandro Sosa
Harris Yulin	Bernstein
Angel Salazar	Chi Chi
Pepe Serna	Angel
Michael P. Moran	Nick The Pig
Al Israel	Hector The Toad
Dennis Holahan	Banker
Mark Margolis	Shadow
Michael Alldredge	Sheffield
Ted Beniades	Seidelbaum
Richard Belzer	M.C. at Babylon Club
Paul Espel	Luis
Arnaldo Salazar	Ernie
Garnett Smith	Immigration Officer
Oliver Stone	Actor
Richard Caselnova	Driver
John Brandon	Immigration Officer #3
Tony Perez	Immigration Officer #2
Victor Campos	Ronnie Echevierra
Albert Carrier	Pedro Quinn
Gary Cervantes	Shooter #1
Carlos Cestero	Matos
Roberto Contreras	Rebenga
Caesar Cordova	Cook
Richard Delmonte	Fernando
Michel Francois	Maitre d'
Ben Frommer	Male Patron
Ronald G. Joseph	Car Salesman
Mario Machado	Interviewer
Joe Marmo	Nacho "El Gordo"
John McCann	Bank Spokesman
Victor Millan	Ariel Bleyer
Santos Morales	Waldo
Mike Moroff	Gaspar's Bodyguard
Manuel Padilla	Kid #2
Michael Rougas	Monsignor
Geno Silva	The Skull
Jim Towers	Cuban Refugee
Angela Aames	Woman at Babylon Club
Cynthia Burr	Woman at Babylon Club
Lana Clarkson	Woman at Babylon Club
Ava Lazar	Woman at Babylon Club
Emilia Crow	Woman at Babylon Club
Marii Mak	Woman at Babylon Club
Shelley Taylor Morgan	Woman at Babylon Club
Pat Simmons	Woman at Babylon Club
Terry Taylor	Woman at Babylon Club
Katt Shea Ruben	Woman at Babylon Club
Gil Baretto	Cuban Refugee
John Carter	Vic Phillips
Chuck Tamburro	Helicopter Pilot

Technical Credits

Brian De Palma	Director
John A. Alonzo	Cinematographer
Martin Bregman	Producer
Jerry Greenberg	Editor
James M. Halty	Stunts
Geoff Hubbard	Set Decoration/Design
Charles D. Knight	Sound/Sound Designer
Giorgio Moroder	Score Composer
Joe Napolitano	Asst. Director
Pat Norris	Costumes/Costume Designer
Oliver Stone	Screenwriter
Stan Parks	Special Effects
Ken Pepiot	Special Effects
Chuck Picerni	Stunts
David Ray	Editor
Ed Richardson	Art Director
Mario Roberts	Stunts
Blake Russell	Set Decoration/Design
Peter Saphier	Co-producer
Ferdinando Scarfiotti	Production Designer
Steven Schwartz	Art Director,Set Decoration/Design
Louis A. Stroller	Executive Producer
Bruce Weintraub	Set Decoration/Design
Jerry Ziesmer	Asst. Director

Editorial Reviews

Updating a classic is a risky, often thankless task. But for director Brian DePalma, re-making the Howard Hawks's gangster masterpiece Scarface proved to be an inspired decision. For without taking anything away from the 1932 version, DePalma created one of the most influential and impressively decadent gangster films ever made. Scarface details the rise and fall of Cuban émigré Tony Montana, a Miami gangster whose pursuit of the American Dream is a ruthless reverie of cocaine and slaughter. DePalma ratchets up the tension in each scene to maximum levels, delivering tragic betrayals and ferocious explosions of violence -- most notably with chainsaws. Al Pacino's performance as Montana remains among his best and boldest, and there are also strong supporting turns by Robert Loggia and a young Michelle Pfeiffer. The film plays like a long cocaine rush, as Tony becomes rich from selling the narcotic, then addicted to it, and finally lost in a murderous paranoid frenzy from it. An intense and sometimes unpleasant experience, Scarface is also a work of consummate skill and intelligence.

Barnes & Noble - Dave Roth

Infinitely quotable and more than a little cartoonish, Brian De Palma's update of Howard Hawks' seminal gangster film revels in its freedom to be larger than life. A work as akin to pop art as any other form, it reworks the crime melodrama in bold, primary colors, mostly blood red. Attracting a great deal of attention for its violence at the time of its release, the controversy overshadowed the fact that everything in the film ran to extremes, including Pacino's performance, the director's visual style (which found him almost reverting to The Fury mode), the dialogue (from a script co-written by Oliver Stone), and most importantly the themes. Scarface focuses on words like "crime" and "America," then lets itself run wild with the associations. That a classically American rise-and-fall story forms the heart of the film is its simplest and best irony. The experience will probably be thrilling to some, particularly those already enthusiastic about De Palma's work, and extremely off-putting to others. Tony Montana may not be an appealing character with which to spend nearly three hours, but there's little chance of forgetting the experience.

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