By The Butcher
You love ’em, he hates ’em! The Butcher carves up your favourite films, and this week, he applies his sharpened cleaver to Brian De Palma’s amped up cult classic Scarface.
Ah, the good ol’ US of A. The land of opportunity. A nation where any man can achieve the impossible dream…The American Dream. He just has to want it enough and work hard. Or if Brian De Palma’s 1983 “classic” (and likely Trump nightmare), Scarface, is to be believed, he can also just choose to tangle with Hector The Toad on a cocaine deal for a Miami drug baron. Shortcuts…gotta love ‘em.
Scarface is the story of Tony Montana (played by Mr. OTT himself, Al Pacino), a Cuban immigrant who meteorically rises to the top of the Florida drug trade before throwing it all away in a white chalky mountain of paranoia and self destruction. Must be a good film, huh? Well, actually no. It’s rubbish. This is a hammed up, utterly unbelievable movie that treats the audience like naive idiots. From homeless illegal immigrant to multi-millionaire drug lord in four easy steps? Please. Are we really meant to believe that Montana would have it so easy? Yes, I know, he was nearly fodder for Hector The Toad’s chainsaw in the film’s opening half hour, but there have to be more obstacles for a potential kingpin to deal with than something that you can pick up from Bunnings.
Also, for all the cocaine, big guns and testosterone-led bluster, this isn’t actually all that entertaining. The scenes between Montana and the utterly unsexy Elvira, played by the usually very sexy Michelle Pfeiffer, are nothing short of monotonous. De Palma should have dispensed with the Elvira character altogether, and instead concentrated more on the intricate and complex nature of the uncomfortably close relationship between Montana and his sister, Gina (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio). That would have been much more interesting…
The final scene – in which Montana comes out from behind a mountain of cocaine, huge M-16 assault rifle blazing, and confronts the assassins sent to kill him – is, I concede, kind of fun. But a classic scene does not make a classic film…otherwise When Harry Met Sally would be one of the greatest films ever made.
Don’t take my word for it…watch Scarface and judge for yourself, but don’t blame me if you end up moving to Florida in search of the non-existent American Dream…only to be hacked up by someone called, I dunno, Chi Chi The Chihuahua…or picked up by the bad boys from ICE.
Want to read more from The Butcher? Check out his clicking of The Wizard Of Oz, his chomping of Jaws, his trampling of Black Swan, his slaying of Gladiator, his bashing of Chopper, his scratching of I’m Not There, his exploding of Interstellar, his take-down of Marvel Studios, and his carve-up of that other cinematic shit-show Citizen Kane.
