A maximalist crime epic with huge style, quotable swagger, and a deliberately ugly rise-and-fall arc. It’s less a cool gangster fantasy than a feverish portrait of greed, excess, and self-destruction, which is why it still hits hard decades later.
Scarface
Where to watch: Buy
Movie · Action · Crime
Fri · 2h 50m
Director: Brian De Palma
Starring: Al Pacino, Steven Bauer, Michelle Pfeiffer
Overview
After getting a green card in exchange for assassinating a Cuban government official, Tony Montana stakes a claim on the drug trade in Miami. Viciously murdering anyone who stands in his way, Tony eventually becomes the biggest drug lord in the state, controlling nearly all the cocaine that comes through Miami. But increased pressure from the police, wars with Colombian drug cartels and his own drug-fueled paranoia serve to fuel the flames of his eventual downfall.
Director
Brian De Palma
Cast
Al Pacino, Steven Bauer, Michelle Pfeiffer
Curator Review
Verdict
A maximalist crime epic with huge style, quotable swagger, and a deliberately ugly rise-and-fall arc. It’s less a cool gangster fantasy than a feverish portrait of greed, excess, and self-destruction, which is why it still hits hard decades later.
Best for
fans of operatic crime dramas
viewers who like loud, stylized filmmaking
people interested in antihero downfall stories
audiences drawn to 1980s excess and neon-soaked atmosphere
Skip if
you dislike extreme violence and profanity
you want subtle or realistic character behavior
you’re turned off by morally repellent protagonists
you prefer lean, restrained crime films
Overview
Brian De Palma turns a gangster story into a garish American nightmare, all glassy surfaces, hot colors, and escalating paranoia. The movie is built around Tony Montana’s appetite: for money, status, power, and self-mythology. That appetite makes the film irresistible and grotesque at the same time.
Worth noting
Al Pacino plays Tony as a force of nature, not a nuanced saint or even a likable villain. The performance is theatrical, volatile, and often funny in a way that curdles into menace. Around him, the film keeps widening its scope until the whole Miami empire feels poisoned by its own success.
Bottom line
What lingers most is how the movie refuses to treat excess as glamorous for long. The parties, the mansion, the coke, the machine-gun bravado all become symptoms of collapse. It’s a big, brash, deeply influential crime film that understands the American dream as a trap with better lighting.
Top Letterboxd reviews
twincoves (4★) · 12197 likes
He did in fact have a scar on his face
mina · 8843 likes
This has got to be the most Straight Man movie to exist
Patrick Willems (4★) · 8705 likes
That mountain of cocaine on Tony's desk? That's a metaphor for what the entire movie feels like
ms (4★) · 6947 likes
al pacino: snorts a pound of coke and kills 30 people me: hes so cute
Karsten (4★) · 6736 likes
lots of snow, calling this a xmas movie
Themes
rise and fall, American Dream, greed, power and corruption, paranoia, immigration and assimilation, drug trade, masculinity