Curator Watchlist
A ferocious early gangster classic that still feels fast, funny, and shockingly violent. Its power comes from Howard Hawks’ brisk staging, Paul Muni’s manic energy, and the movie’s unsentimental look at ambition, masculinity, and organized crime as a corrupting American myth.
Where to watch: Buy
Sat · 1h 33m
Director: Howard Hawks
Starring: Paul Muni, Ann Dvorak, Karen Morley
In 1920s Chicago, Italian immigrant and notorious thug, Antonio 'Tony' Camonte, aka Scarface, shoots his way to the top of the mobs while trying to protect his sister from the criminal life.
Howard Hawks
Paul Muni, Ann Dvorak, Karen Morley
A ferocious early gangster classic that still feels fast, funny, and shockingly violent. Its power comes from Howard Hawks’ brisk staging, Paul Muni’s manic energy, and the movie’s unsentimental look at ambition, masculinity, and organized crime as a corrupting American myth.
Howard Hawks turns a prohibition-era mob tale into something lean, savage, and strangely playful. The movie moves with real velocity, stacking shootouts, betrayals, and power grabs until the whole thing feels like a criminal fever dream. Even nearly a century later, its energy is startling.
What makes it endure is not just the violence, but the attitude behind it. Tony Camonte is less a tragic antihero than a gleeful engine of appetite, and the film understands how seductive that kind of unchecked ambition can be. It’s a gangster picture, but also a sharp study of American excess and masculine performance.
The style is crisp, the dialogue is sharp, and the set pieces have a blunt force that still lands. If you care about the evolution of crime cinema, this is foundational viewing; if you just want a hard-charging old movie that absolutely rips, it delivers that too.
san (3.5★) · 2026 likes
this was good and all but al pacino wasn’t that good. i mean, you barely see him in this movie. his performance was so forgettable honestly where even was he?
Josh Lewis (4★) · 1312 likes
All the shooting. I love that stuff, you know, the killing. Lotta killing.
SilentDawn (4★) · 737 likes
78 Basically a supercut of tommy guns and wild gangster behavior. This is almost 90 years old and it absolutely rips.
Filipe Furtado (5★) · 579 likes
Anarchic death run. A movie of pure animal feeling. While DePalna's gangster wants the material goods US promised him, Hawks really only wants the satisfication of knowing he has power over every other man. The movie slapstick qualities are its hidden weapon, a true shotgun farce. Has anyone ever seen as happy in a movie than Paul Muni when he gets that big gun? A little kid that knows exactly what he wants, kill people until he eventually will get
noen (4★) · 416 likes
A criticism of the Prohibition-Era America that can still be considered today, a film that emerges the reflection of a time when organized crime flourished at absurd levels, fueled by the contradictions of a society that criminalizes consumption, but glorifies excess. The protagonist is both a product and a perpetrator of this chaos. His ambition is intoxicating yet corrosive, a symbol of the seductive fascination of the unchecked ego. The film situates him not as an anomaly but as an… more
A foundational early gangster film with the same rise-and-fall criminal momentum and pre-Code bite.
Another essential early mob picture that pairs criminal ambition with social critique.
The most famous remake, expanding the original’s themes into a bigger, more operatic modern gangster tragedy.
A classic crime saga about Prohibition, power, and the collapse of the gangster dream.
Shares the era’s hard-edged crime energy while adding moral conflict and street-level tragedy.
A tense, dialogue-driven crime drama with a similar fatalistic underworld atmosphere.
A ferocious gangster film that pushes criminal mania and violence into near-psychotic territory.
A landmark crime film about professional criminals, pressure, and the fragility of criminal plans.
A gritty, unsentimental look at organized crime and the machinery behind it.
A tightly constructed heist-and-crime story with the same cool, fatalistic edge.
A hard-boiled crime picture that leans into corruption, betrayal, and urban menace.
A stylish gangster-era crime film that channels prohibition violence and operatic mob power.
organized crime, ambition, American Dream corruption, masculinity, violence, power and status, family loyalty, prohibition-era corruption
gangster classic, pre-Code Hollywood, black-and-white, prohibition era, violent crime, American Dream, masculinity, crime drama, stylized violence, classic studio era