I’m going to say something that needs to be said. Scarface is an extremely overrated movie. It pains me to even have to type that sentence as Al Pacino also portrayed one of the greatest film characters ever, Michael Corleone, but it’s the absolute truth. Okay, so the movie starts in Cuba and Tony and Manolo get to come to America during the Mariel Boatlift. The whole Mariel Boatlift aspect wasn’t done very well. I mean, this was a big blunder in the history of the United States and it should have been more detailed. Tony and Manolo get into the United States, where they work at a dive restaurant and lament over how the streets in America are paved with gold. Here’s another problem, the struggle, which should have been a big part of the film was glossed over. We see the guys work once before they triumphantly quit and throw their aprons at their boss. They go see Omar, who has a job for them. Tony talks some shit to Omar and gets a higher paying job out of him. The deal goes awry, one of Tony’s buddies gets chopped up with a chainsaw, and Manolo saves the day, catching a bullet in the process. Immediately they are introduced to the kingpin Frank and Tony gives him the coke and the buy money to impress him. They begin working for Frank, make some money, Tony wants to marry Frank’s wife Elvira, and obviously things are starting to go bad. But here’s the thing, we never really see Tony and Manolo working for Frank. We don’t see what they did while in his employ. The one thing we do see is Tony visit Sosa with Omar. Omar gets hung from a helicopter and Tony makes a deal Frank didn’t okay. Frank is pissed off when he finds out and in what seems like five minutes of movie they go to war and Tony kills a groveling Frank. In again, what seems like about thirty seconds, Tony is married to Elvira and then takes Frank’s place as the kingpin. They didn’t really show Tony’s rise. His rise was basically a montage of piles of money and tons of coke being shown while a terrible 1980’s song plays in the background. The real question is, how the hell was this movie almost three freakin’ hours long? How is this possible? Every major point in the plot takes under a minute to start and finish. And that is what I found out is the major problem. They put way too much emphasis on just ridiculous stuff. Tony’s volatile relationship with his sister, did we need that? It was just a set-up to kill Manolo and that was dumb anyway. What we basically got was two hours of Tony giving the “you need people like me” speech, watching pelicans in the hot tub, alienating Manolo, his sister and his wife, and the ridiculous plot twist of Tony being sent to blow up a journalist’s car by Sosa. Tony calls it off because there’s a woman and kid in the car and kills Sosa’s henchman. Sosa is enraged and sends a hit squad and here’s where the craziness begins. Tony is upset about Manny and shoves his head into a mountain of coke. His distraught sister shoots him but he’s so high he barely feels it. Sosa’s hit squad shows up and his sister is killed. An insane gun fight ensues but due to the fact that he sniffed enough coke to kill a stable of horses, Tony gets shot and just keeps going. This is where he busts out an arsenal of huge guns and says, “Say hello to my little friend”. He eventually gets shot close range and falls in front of the neon “The World Is Yours” sign. The end. Do you see what I mean? You shouldn’t be able to summarize a 3 hour movie in 500 words. I couldn’t do it with any of the Godfather trilogy or Casino. I’ll give it this. The performances themselves weren’t bad and it had greatness in it but it was not a great movie. We needed to see that real struggle of coming to America and knowing the only way you could make something of yourself is through criminal activities. We needed more of that and less preposterous shootouts. Maybe it’s me, I don’t like my gangster flicks so shoot ‘em up style. I like them realistic. With all that said, I’m standing by my guns, Scarface is highly overrated. What do you guys think?
Article By: Jon DaBove
