IRREVERENT Magazine - Movie Reviews

I don't review (i.e., "give my particular loud-mouthed opinion on") enough of my favorite movies, and Brian DePalma's 1983 classic crime-drama Scarface is firmly in my top 20 of all time.

It's the 80s and the "cocaine cowboys" are flying high in south Florida, dropping product on discothèques all over the place. For the most part, everyone is happy, especially those profiting from the burgeoning drug trade and those who are high.

[amazon product=B0000AMRJC pos=right][/amazon]Enter Tony Montana (Al Pacino), a Cuban criminal anxious to make his way up the murder/coke-trafficking industry. He's not without skills either, as he quickly demonstrates by killing a Cuban official for Salieri (F. Murray Abraham), a local tough who rewards him by putting his (Pacino's) life in imminent danger with a shady coke deal that goes tragically bad in one of cinema's most infamously violent scenes ever captured in a bathtub.

Montana escapes, however, and proves his loyalty to local crime boss Frank Lopez (Robert Loggia) by bringing him both the money and the drugs. A grateful Lopez gives his up-and-coming criminal some advice, which he (Montana) ignores, right around the time Lopez' girlfriend Elviria (an 87 lb Michelle Pfeiffer) makes her grand entrance. The stage is set.

Montana pursues Elviria (Pfeiffer), Lopez loses his grip, and Salieri is hanged from a helicopter. Montana (Pacino) eventually stakes his own claim, and, high on coke (and power) spirals out of control until a jilted former partner sends a small army to kill him (Pacino), and he shows everyone his "leetle friend!"

Iconic and classic, Scarface is a must-have in any serious movie fan's collection.