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Updating a classic is a risky, often thankless task. But for director Brian DePalma, re-making the Howard Hawks's gangster masterpiece Scarface proved to be an inspired decision. For without taking anything away from the 1932 version, DePalma created one of the most influential and impressively decadent gangster films ever made. Scarface details the rise and fall of Cuban émigré Tony Montana, a Miami gangster whose pursuit of the American Dream is a ruthless reverie of cocaine and slaughter. DePalma ratchets up the tension in each scene to maximum levels, delivering tragic betrayals and ferocious explosions of violence -- most notably with chainsaws. Al Pacino's performance as Montana remains among his best and boldest, and there are also strong supporting turns by Robert Loggia and a young Michelle Pfeiffer. The film plays like a long cocaine rush, as Tony becomes rich from selling the narcotic, then addicted to it, and finally lost in a murderous paranoid frenzy from it. An intense and sometimes unpleasant experience, Scarface is also a work of consummate skill and intelligence. Dave Roth

All Movie Guide

Director Brian DePalma's Scarface features Al Pacino as Tony Montana, an exiled Cuban criminal who goes to work for Miami drug lord Robert Loggia. Montana rises to the top of Florida's crime chain, appropriating Loggia's cokehead mistress (Michelle Pfeiffer) in the process. Howard Hawks' "X Marks the Spot" motif in depicting the story line's many murders is dispensed with in the 1983 Scarface; instead, we are inundated with blood by the bucketful, especially in the now-infamous buzz-saw scene. One carry-over from the original Scarface is Tony Montana's incestuous yearnings for his sister Gina (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio). The screenplay for the 1983 Scarface was written by Oliver Stone. Hal Erickson

Product Details

• UPC: 025192044816
• Source: UNIVERSAL STUDIOS
• Presentation: Wide Screen
• Sound: Dolby AC-3 Surround Sound
• Editions: Subtitled, Dubbed, Repackaged
• Sales Rank: 10,483

This DVD is also available as part of a box set:

• Gangster: the Ultimate Film Collection
• Legendary Gangsters 5-Movie Collection