scarface

Plot

In 1980, young Cuban hitman Tony Montana, the son of a Cuban woman and an American man, is kicked out of his country during the infamous Mariel boatlift, in which Cuban president Fidel Castro exiled thousands of prisoners and other political undesirables to Florida. There, Tony and several of his old prison friends, including his partner-in-crime, Manny Ray (or Manolo), find themselves being held in a detention camp beneath route 95 while the U.S. government attempts to figure out what to do with the fugitives.

Luck comes for them when they are hired by a Miami drug dealer, Frank Lopez, to murder a former Castro loyalist, Rebenga. In exchange for carrying out the assassination, Lopez promises to obtain US immigration green cards for Manny, Tony, and another associate named Angel Fernandez. Soon after a detention camp riot is started, and using the confusion and chaos as a cover Tony stabs the loyalist, killing him.

Once freed from the camp, Tony and Manny go to work washing dishes at a Cuban food stand in Miami. They spend a lot of time daydreaming about becoming big shots, and are eventually approached by Lopez' henchman Omar Suarez for a job. Tony's arrogance comes close to getting him killed but in the end he is offered a job by Omar which is far bigger than expected. He must pick up 3 kilograms of cocaine. After tough negotiations, the pair are then offered $5,000 to complete a cocaine deal with a Colombian couple.

Tony and Angel walk into the small outside-entry hotel room while Manny and Chi Chi wait outside. The deal goes sour, with Tony and Angel are double-crossed by the Colombians, who want to kill them for the money and keep the drugs for themselves. They are chained to a shower curtain rod and Tony is forced to watch while Angel is dismembered with a chainsaw.

Outside, Manny and Chi Chi realize that Tony and Angel have not returned yet. They move in, assuming the long wait meant the deal had gone badly. Just as Tony is about to suffer the same fate as Angel, his friends burst in to save him, killing the Colombians. Tony chases the ringleader, Hector the Toad, outside and shoots him dead in the middle of a crowded South Beach street. With the cash and the cocaine, Tony, Manny and Chi-Chi escape before the police show up.

Tony turns both the cash and the llello (pronounced Yayo, cocaine) over to Frank Lopez, who, seeing that Tony has a knack for completing the dirty work, immediately hires Tony and Manny as enforcers in his criminal hierarchy. They discuss business at Frank's estate and The Babylon nightclub, where Tony becomes attracted to Frank's girlfriend, Elvira Hancock.

Over the next few months, Tony begins his meteoric rise up through the ranks of the Miami cocaine underworld in bloody fashion. He re-establishes contact with his family, feeling that his money and nice clothes will make them proud of him. His mother immediately disowns him for being involved in the drug trade. Tony, however, dotes on his younger sister, Gina, becoming very protective of her to the point of stifling. When Tony sees Gina dancing with and preparing to have sex with a sleazy guy at the Babylon, Tony throws the man out, and and orders Manny to drive Gina home. Tony thinks he is protecting her from being hit on, but this backfires, as Gina gets to know Manny and eventually begins seeing him behind Tony's back.

While accompanying Omar to Bolivia, Tony begins to show his defiance to Lopez's authority when he negotiates a deal outside of the previously set parameters with Bolivian drug lord Alejandro Sosa. Sosa then dismisses Omar to his helicopter as he and Tony take a walk outside his mansion. Sosa then explains to Tony that Omar was an informant for the police. Sosa hands Tony a pair of binoculars and Tony watches as Omar is thrown out of the helicopter with a noose around his neck.

Tony then leaves Lopez's service and strikes out on his own, while making approaches to Lopez's girlfriend, Elvira Hancock. The full-blown conflict between Lopez and Tony over these matters result in an assassination attempt in which Frank sends two men to kill Tony at The Babylon night club. Tony is wounded but makes it out alive, killing the assassins in the process. He pays a late-night visit to Frank and his corrupt cop partner. Frank, obviously surprised to see Tony alive, puts on a ruse and vows to find the assassin. Tony, however, has already traced the plot back to Frank and draws his gun, unmoved as Frank begs for his life. He finally relents, saying that Frank isn't worth killing. Instead, Manny steps out of the shadows and shoots Frank, while Tony shoots the cop.

After Frank's death, Tony takes over his businesses. He marries Elvira in a lavish ceremony, and everything seems to be going well. Tony begins to deal with Sosa directly, and this arrangement allows "Montana, Co." to expand across the nation and bring in millions of dollars monthly. Tony buys "the world" as he had so often dreamed, buying a huge new mansion, new cars, a large new security camera system, new clothes, and so on. However, his addiction to his own product, his overprotectivness of Gina, and his careless neglect of Elvira, all indicate that the good times can not last. The larger his empire and wealth grow, the more Tony is losing control. Elvira is becoming more and more distant as she sinks deeper into cocaine addiction and Manny frequently has "personal business" to attend to instead of accompanying Tony all of the time.

Other problems arise as Tony's banker becomes unwilling to continue with their agreed-apon arrangements and wants to charge higher fees for washing the increasing flow of drug money (either for profit or to make up for the increased risk). Tony acrimoniously breaks off the relationship with the bank and settles for what he thinks is a better deal. This deal backfires. While changing over a million in cash into checks, undercover Miami police inform him it was a sting operation, resulting in his arrest on charges of tax evasion. No matter how much money Tony throws in the face of his lawyer and the justice system, he can't buy his way out of the inevitable prison sentence. The future looks bleak until Sosa calls Tony in for a meeting.

A group of Bolivian drug dealers, Sosa and a CIA officer offer to help Tony out of his legal troubles through their connections in the White House and Justice Department. In exchange, Tony must help them rid themselves of their own problem, a Latin-American journalist who is planning to expose the extent of corruption in the Bolivian Government, which includes Sosa and his comrades. Sosa explains that his assassin will do most of the work, but he needs Tony to guide him around the U.S. as he doesn't speak English.

Tony is mulling this proposal over at a fancy restaurant with Elvira and Manny. He is in a drunken/irritated state and snaps at Elvira, demanding to know why she isn't eating. He taunts her about her drug addiction and claims that he can't have a baby with her. Elvira angrily retorts that Tony would not be a good father and throws water on his suit, getting the attention of all of patrons. An enraged Tony tries to get up but Manny restrains him as Elvira storms off. Tony claims that he will find another wife. All the patrons are staring at Tony as he leaves. He angrily snaps "say good night to the bad guy" and storms out.

While on the mission to set and detonate a car bomb in New York City for Sosa, Tony gets cold feet when the journalist's wife and two little children unexpectedly enter the car with him. Tony voices his disapproval, to no avail as the assassin speaks no English, and when the assassin is on the verge of detonating the bomb, Tony shoots him to prevent it. Later on that day when Tony returns to Miami, he receives a call from Sosa who is angered that not only the journalist survived to give his presentation, but also because the bomb was found under the car. Sosa threatens revenge, though the easily agitated Tony does not understand that the mission cannot be re-attempted and begins shouting at Sosa, not noticing that the Bolivian has already hung up in frustration.

Tony goes to his estranged mother's house and gets Gina's address. His mother pleas for him to leave his sister alone but he ignores her, and she laments "why do you have to destroy everything that you touch?" When he goes to Gina's new mansion, he is shocked when Manny opens the door and sees Gina at the top of the stairs, just putting on a bath robe. At the shock of seeing his sister and his best friend together, Tony's face turns into a snarl as he quickly loses his temper and shoots Manny twice; a hysterical Gina reveals they were just married the day before. Afterwards, Tony forgets why he was angry and barely feels any emotion as his men take a hysterical, sobbing Gina back to his mansion in their Rolls-Royce. Tony goes straight to his office at the top of the grand staircase to sniff cocaine.

After a while, an army of Sosa's hitmen break in through the back area of the mansion. Though their movements are caught on the security cameras, Tony is in a trance due to the cocaine and he pays no attention. Outside, Tony's guards are taken down one by one before they can raise the alarm. One of the assassins tosses an anchored rope and climbs up to Tony's balcony behind the office. At the same time, Gina, dressed in only a sheer robe and panties enters her brother's office and locks the door. She asks Tony "this is what you want", indicating her body and taunting her brother. She tells Tony that he will not let any other man be with her, while a half-dazed Tony stares from his cocaine. She pulls out a revolver and shoots at Tony six times, striking him once in the leg. Her last shot strikes near where an assassin was hiding and he bursts through the balcony door and mistakenly shoots her with a machine gun. Tony comes to his senses and knocks him out of the window and into the pool and empties out a whole magazine of ammunition at him. Tony turns to a lifeless Gina lying on the floor and goes to her, he comforts her dead body and says, "I'll be with you soon". Tony's friend Chi-Chi shoots some of the hitmen, while retreating back up the stairs to Tony's locked office door. He knocks on the door, begging Tony to let him in, but Tony is completely oblivious and still occupied with Gina. With nowhere to go, Chi-Chi is shot, and four hitmen regroup at the door, preparing to storm the office.

Tony sees Chi-Chi's death on the cameras and arms himself with an M16 rifle fitted with an underslung M203 grenade launcher. He walks over to the middle of the office and yells the seminal movie line, "Say 'Hello' to my little friend!" He then blows the door to pieces with the grenade launcher, killing four of the hitmen. He comes out from the office and engages Sosa's men in a gun battle. Outnumbered and without cover, he is shot many times but keeps fighting. Meanwhile, as the firefight rages, Sosa's right-hand man and assassin leader (seen in Bolivia) ascends up the rope to the balcony. The hitman leader makes his way into Tony's office from behind and finishes off a defiant Tony in the back with a blast from a shotgun. Tony falls into the pool at the bottom of the stairs, with the "The world is yours" globe overlooking his submerged body.

This film is dedicated to Howard Hawks and Ben Hecht, who were the writers of the original Scarface.

Production and Controversy

Scarface was directed by Brian De Palma, and written by now famed director Oliver Stone while he battled a cocaine addiction. Stone consulted the Miami police and the Drug Enforcement Agency while writing the film, incorporating many true crimes into the film (one set of crime scene photos Stone was shown depicted a man who had been dismembered with a chainsaw and stuffed into an aluminum trashcan). Also, there is some controversy regarding the origin of the character Tony Montana. Some people believe that the character was originally based on a wrestler who appeared in the World Wrestling Federation in the late 1970s. Others liken Tony with the real-life Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar. Ironically, a popular wrestler in the 1990s by the name of Razor Ramon recently confirmed in an interview with the Pro Wrestling Torch that he based his character whole-cloth on the character Tony Montana. Writer Oliver Stone claims in an interview first featured on the Collector's Edition DVD release, that he took the character's last name from his favorite football player at the time - Joe Montana of the San Francisco 49ers.

The film was originally to be filmed in Florida but it received criticism from the Cuban community, which objected to the film's representation of Cubans as drug dealers. Also, leaders in the Cuban community wanted Stone and the movie's producers to include scenes which would show Anti-Castro activity in Miami as part of the movie's plot. After protracted negotiations over the script, the producers ultimately refused to give in to their demands, saying that the film was about cocaine and not the politics of Castro's Cuba. As a result, numerous employees who worked on the films received death threats. In order to ensure the safety of the crew and to avoid confrontations, with the exception being obvious exterior shots, the movie was filmed in and around Los Angeles. The film does contain scenes where other Cubans are disgusted by Tony's actions. One of the undercover officers during the sting was a Cuban commenting, "You make a real Cuban throw up!"

When the film was submitted to the MPAA, it was rated X for the graphic language and violence. DePalma would edit the film two additional times, toning down the violence but still getting an X-rating from the MPAA. After the film was rejected for a third time, DePalma, when he appealed the MPAA's decision, convinced the MPAA with help from a panel of various real life police officers and narcotics officers, who told the MPAA that the violence in DePalma's films was an accurate portrayal of real life drug dealers and that the film should be released with its violence intact to show viewers how violent the drug trade was. After a vote of 18 to 2, the MPAA agreed to give the third cut of the film an R-rating. But DePalma, who felt that there were no real differences between the two "clean" cuts he put together and the original director's cut version, arranged to have his original "X" cut released to theaters with an R-rating.

For the remainder of the 1980s, Scarface held the record for the movie containing the most uses of the word "fuck." (A popular Internet rumor states that the group Blink 182 got their name from a mis-count of how many times Tony says "fuck" in the film.). In 2006, a video entitled Scarface (Short Version) began circulating the internet. Consisting solely of clips of the word "fuck" (and its variations) from the film, it runs one minute and thirty seconds.

See also: List of films ordered by uses of the word "fuck"

USA Network announced in 2003 they would be producing a mini-series based on the movie, however the series' current status is unknown.

Scarface and pop culture

Scarface has been frequently referred to in other movies and on television. Memorable lines are quoted in Jane Austen's Mafia!, The Simpsons, SportsCenter, and South Park, among others. Tony Montana's style of dress (along with that of Don Johnson's Sonny Crockett character on Miami Vice) became synonymous with both the cool and sleazy aspects of 1980s pop culture.

The film New Jack City did feature a few scenes from Scarface although the Nino Brown character was modeled after Tony Montana.

Music

Scarface is also notable for its extensive popularity with many hip-hop artists and fans, in particular those affiliated with gangsta rap. A number of rappers single out Tony Montana as a role model for his transition from poverty to wealth. Many Latino and Hispanic rappers dress like characters from the film, though they only opt to emulate the "street clothes" Tony's crew wears in the beginning of the movie, neglecting the flashy suits which he wears for the majority of the film. It has also become very popular to embroider or emboss images of Tony onto leather jackets and pants.

Lines from the film are also frequently sampled on hip-hop songs. The Houston-based Geto Boys were one of the earliest rap groups to sample the lines and dialogue. During Public Enemy's "Welcome to the Terrordome," Flavor Flav recites several lines from the film. Music from the movie has also been sampled in the instrumentals for hip-hop songs such as Mobb Deep's "G.O.D. Pt. III" and "It's Mine". Nas recorded a song "The World is Yours" based on the motto Tony Montana lived by. One hip-hop artist - Brad Jordan (later a member of the Geto Boys) has even gone so far as to name himself Scarface after the film, and another goes by the name Tony Montana. A Houston-area art car artist is known to wear flashy pimp suits modeled after the ones seen in the film. Various Latin rap artists such as Fat Joe, Big Pun, Cuban Link and The Beatnuts sample famous lines from the movie Scarface and pay regular homage to the lead character, Tony Montana. New York rapper Fabolous uses the lines of Tony Montana's famous restaurant speech on track 14 of his debut ablum Ghetto Fabolous, called "The Bad Guy". "[Al Pacino] You're all a bunch of fucking assholes You know why? Cause you don't got the guts to be what you want to be Fabolous...he doesn't have that problem He always tells the truth That's what it's all about? That's what we work so hard for Fabolous? So they can point their fucking fingers and call me the fucking bad guy?"

In a nod to the allegiance many rappers have towards Scarface, the title character in the Krazee-Eyez Killa episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm tells Larry David that he is thinking about having Scarface run 24/7 on various screens in his new bedroom. Krazee-Eyez, played by Chris Williams, is a caricature of the standard gangsta rapper.

In 2003, in preparation for the release of Scarface on DVD, Universal made controversial plans to have modern hip-hop artists record an entirely new musical score for the film, which would take the place of the original 1980s New Wave soundtrack. The move was decried by fans of the film, and DePalma, who had a contractual final cut on the film, refused to edit it.

The song "Scarface (Push It To The Limit)" that is played when the movie shows Tony's wealth and success, was also used in one of the South Park episodes depicting Cartman training to win a disabled olympics. The hook of the song is used in Rick Ross' song "Push it". "Scarface" reappeared in a recent episode of South Park when Cartman quotes a lot of the movie's lines during a South Park Talent Show.

The song "The World is Mine" by David Guetta, seems to be an indirect homage to the themes of Scarface.

Influence on Other Works

Rockstar Games, the creators of the Grand Theft Auto video games are evidently quite fond of the film; Grand Theft Auto III features nearly the entire soundtrack of the film as one of its in-game radio stations and the following game in the series, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City is a reimagining of the film and even includes a replica of Tony Montana's lavish mansion. Club Malibu is also a replica from Scarface, and the main protagonist of the game, Tommy Vercetti, can unlock the 'Vercetti Suit' which is similar to Tony Montana's towards the end of the film. There is also a hidden bloody room with a chainsaw pick-up as a sort of re-enactment of the chainsaw torture scene.

Tony's line "Say hello to my little friend!" has become something of a pop culture saying, usually (but not always) pertaining to firearms or any other sort of projectile weapon. This usage is incorrect however; he is referring to the first grenade he launches at the door of his second floor office. The quote has been refrenced in several video games, movies, as well as SportsCenter, where commentators use it generally to refer to a powerful dunk over another player.

In Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls, Ace parodies this line by saying "Say hello to my stinky little friend!" before spraying a pair of poachers with a skunk.

The famous Scarface quote has also made its way into the video game Hitman, in which one of the stages is called 'Say hello to my little friend.' The level is based in Latin America and the antagonist of the level is a man who is dressed identically to Montana and dies with a similar re-enactment of the end scene where Montana dies in the movie. The line also comes into use in Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory in several levels, where guards with assault rifles will parrot this line word for word before opening fire.

In the animatrix a detective's story a scene briefly displays sign that says "The world is yours".

A licensed video game, Scarface: The World is Yours is currently being developed by Radical Entertainment and is scheduled to be released by Vivendi Universal Games sometime in 2006. The game is reported to be a pseudo-sequel, and goes on the premise that Tony actually survived the raid on his mansion from the end of the film.

There is a poster in the intro of the show The Boondocks where one of the characters is seen in a similiar poster as Scarface's.

In the Justice League Unlimited episode "Double Date" there is a flashback scene of the Helena Bertinelli (Huntress) as a child with her parents, her father is clearly modeled after Tony Montana with his obvious facial structures including a scar on his right eye. Helena's father is also killed in his home which is undeniabley modeled after Tony Montana's home at the end of Scarface.

Videogames

A video game based on the film is set to be released around fall 2006. It is said to change the ending scene so that Tony does not die but is able to shoot his way out of his mansion and escape. The rest of the game deals with Tony getting his revenge on Sosa. It has been confirmed to be a free roaming game similar to the Grand Theft Auto titles and it will include a lot of freedom over drug running, laundering money, buying items for your mansion, buying cars and protecting shipments of drugs from the police. The Xbox 360 version of this title was recently cancelled. However, a PSP version is still in the works.

Prospective Sequel

In the year 2001, plans were laid into motion for hip hop artist Cuban Link to write and star in a sequel to Scarface entitled "Son of Tony."^[1] The plans for a prospective sequel drew both praise as well as cricitism, and after several years Cuban Link had expressed that he may no longer be involved with the project as the result of movie rights issues and creative control.^[2]

Critical Reception

Scarface, upon its first release, drew controversy regarding the violence and graphic language in the film by many movie critics. Despite this, the film was a major success at the box-office and gathered a large cult following. It is said on the 2 Disc Special Edition by the director, Brian De Palma, that only one film critic enjoyed the movie.

Cast

• 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 Suarez
• Paul Shenar - Alejandro Sosa
• Harris Yulin - Mel Bernstein
• Ángel Salazar - Chi Chi
• Arnaldo Santana - Ernie
• Pepe Serna - Angel
• Michael P. Moran - Nick The Pig
• Al Israel - Hector The Toad
• Mark Margolis - Alberto

Trivia

The song "Scarface" (Push it to the limit) has become extremely popular in internet culture, especially in the website YTMND. The song is usually played to various background images of mathematical limits, or parodies of a newspaper ad to travel back in time.

The act of taking a large pile of cocaine, putting your nose to it, and inhaling as much as possible is reffered to by some as "Doing a Scarface".

References

• "Scarface Politics" in Vassilis K. Fouskas. 2003. Zones of Conflict. London: Pluto Press. ISBN 0-7453-2029-5. Pp. 34-62.

1. ^ Ozone Magazine - "Son of Tony" Feb 2002 article
2. ^ Latin Rapper - "Cuban Link Starts His Chain Reaction"

External links

• Scarface (1983) at the Internet Movie Database
• Scarface1983.com
• Scarface Movie Soundboard