Brian De Palma is arguably one of the greatest filmmakers of the last 50 years with classic films such as "Carrie" (1976) and "The Untouchables" (1987) to his name with this movie he has made his masterpiece and one of the finest movies about the mob ever put on film along with "The Godfather" (1972), "The Godfather Part II" (1974), and "Goodfellas" (1990), but unlike those movies it doesn't touch on the Italian mafia. Al Pacino stars in perhaps the finest and most manic performance as Tony Montana a Cuban exile who ends up in Miami and is desperate to find a way to make a living in America by any means necessary with his best friends Manny (Steven Bauer), Chi Chi (Angel Salazar), and Angel (Pepe Serna) in a refugee camp and as a result becomes a part of the mob. in order to make money and survive. Montana then meets a drug dealer named Frank Lopez (Robert Loggia) who gave them green cards and a pardon for a murder they committed in Cuba. Then Montana becomes friends with another drug dealer named Omar Suarez (F. Murray Abraham), and falls in love with Frank's wife Elvira (Michelle Pfeiffer). This movie focuses so much more than Montana's life of drugs and crime it also focuses on his family relationships with his mother and his sister Gina (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio) disgusted at the fact that he lives a life of crime, and is really a study on Montana's character but mostly doesn't portray him in the best way throughout the movie. The performances in the movie are rock solid with Pacino and Pfeiffer being the biggest standouts, and De Palma's direction is top notch with a very masterfully written screenplay by Oliver Stone. The movie is a remake of Howard Hawks' 1932 gangster film of the same name with Paul Muni in the lead role which I still have yet to see. This is a must see film for anyone that calls themselves a film buff and is a masterpiece of the crime genre.
Review of Scarface
