![]() ![]() He let him rise through the ranks, even as he tried to bite off more than he could chew. Frank is the father figure who initially took a chance on Tony. ![]() Montana’s betrayal of Frank Lopez is crucial to his downfall. Within a few years, Montana is doing so well, the feds target him for tax evasion. ![]() He gets caught on the orbit of Alejandro Sosa (Paul Shenar), agreeing to supply cocaine from Bolivia independent of the other drug lords. All you have to do is take it, and Montana has both hands out.įrank warns his protégé, “The guys who last in this business are the guys who fly straight – lowkey, quiet and the guys who want it all – chicas, champagne, flash – they don’t last.” But Montana is a meteor, bound to burn up in the atmosphere. And when he gets out of the kitchen and into the heat of crime, he hits the ground running. Emilio Rebenga, who tortured the brother of the crime boss Lopez. In exchange for a Green Card, Montana and his friend Manny Ribera (Steven Bauer) assassinate Gen. The officers note his criminal past, the telltale tattoo on his arm, and the scar on his face, which despite their insults was obviously not caused by oral sex. He says even American prison is better than his life on the Caribbean island. Montana seeks asylum, telling immigration officers he is a political prisoner who doesn’t agree with his country’s politics and owns nothing under communism. Scarface opens shortly after the Mariel boatlift, the 1980 exodus which followed Cuba’s economic crash. These words are flashed in both films and hit each of the two criminal aspirants as hard as the “give me your tired, poor, and hungry” promises carved under the Statue of Liberty. Their shared first mistake is to believe in the American Dream. In the Cold War era film, Montana is a refugee from Cuba. In the original Howard Hughes production, Tony was an immigrant from Italy. Montana’s first crime boss in America, Frank Lopez (Robert Loggia), has weathered the climate change from President Carter to the Gipper, and warns Tony to never “underestimate the other guy’s greed.” Scarface is a rags-to-riches-to-self-destructive fireball story, and nothing succeeds like excess. Tony’s economic theory is much more succinct: “You know what capitalism is? Getting fucked.” De Palma’s adaptation happens in the Reagan era, a time when lucky opportunists could get their lips around the spigots of cash before it got a chance to trickle down. The original 1932 film took place during Prohibition when crime was a viable means of survival. Still, Montana experiences perhaps the greatest fall of all. They almost all reach dizzying heights, and everyone of them sees the dream slip through their fingers. ![]() Pacino would go on to play Carlito in Carlito’s Way and Lefty in Donnie Brasco, but while each hoodlum brings a new facet to his rogues gallery, none of his gangsters ever achieve their ultimate desires. The actor supplanted Paul Muni’s Tony Carmonte as the recognizably scarred face of the title role. Tony Montana continued Pacino’s run of criminal icons, which included Sonny in Dog Day Afternoon and the ultimate crime family head, Michael Corleone in The Godfather films. And just as he is on the brink of winning the trifecta, he is blown away like so much dust up a nose.ĭid he lose because the Cuban mobster didn’t heed the advice of his first crime boss? Or is it because he just couldn’t stand to see his sister and his best friend wearing his-and-her pajamas? In truth, Montana’s fall can probably be traced back to when he learned to speak English by “watching guys like Humphrey Bogart and James Cagney.”ĭirected by Brian De Palma, and written by Oliver Stone, Scarface is a remake of Howard Hawks’ vastly influential 1932 mob movie, so Montana’s explosive descent was preordained. Yet Al Pacino’s antihero breaks both in his quest for money, power, and women. “All I have in this world is my balls and my word, and I don’t break them for no one,” Tony Montana declares in the 1983 gangster classic, Scarface. ![]()
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