After months of delays, Geetu Mohandas’s Toxic swaggered into cinemas last week, promising to re-examine its lead actor Yash’s hyper-macho image. While Toxic fired many blanks, the film’s over-the-top tone brought to mind another, much more successful attempt at using excess to depict excess: Brian De Palma’s Scarface (1983).Based on both the 1930 novel of the same name as well as Howard Hawks’s adaptation with Paul Muni from 1932, De Palma’s Scarface has many imitators but few rivals. Endlessly quoted and referenced in both Hollywood and Bollywood, Scarface is the kind of movie that several directors try but few actually get.Oliver Stone’s excellent screenplay sets the rise and fall of Tony Montana (Al Pacino) in Miami against American tensions with Cuba, the rising popularity of cocaine, 1980s bling and Giorgio Moroder’s synth-heavy score. Tony is a Cuban crook who gets entry into the United States by claiming to be a political refugee. Bursting with ruthlessness and chutzpah, Tony quickly rises up the ranks of Miami drug dealer Frank’s gang.
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Scarface (1983).Tony also wants Frank’s slinky wife Elvira (Michelle Pfeiffer) all for himself. Is it love or rivalry? While there are crackling scenes between Pacino and Pfeiffer – in her breakthrough role – Scarface doesn’t romanticise their relationship.For Tony, the fun lies in the pursuit, best seen in the delightful moments when he mercilessly flirts with Elvira while car-shopping, or when he informs her where her best interests lie. Tony’s creepy possessiveness over his sister Gina (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio) is an indication of the kind of man he is.The hubris that turbo-charges Tony’s ascent is captured by the slogan “The World Is Yours” that Tony has made his life credo. Drowning in cocaine and money, angered over Elvira’s indifference now that she is finally his, and sickened by Gina’s independence, Tony brings out his “little friend” – his machine gun – to settle scores once and for all.Scarface is available on JioHotstar and can be rented from Prime Video, YouTube Movies and Apple TV.The film put off critics when it was released but won over audiences, who connected with its street-smart rawness, sharp commentary on the American Dream, and Brian De Palma’s adroit control over Tony’s love for overkill. The secret of Scarface’s endurance lies in its precise excess.Tony’s now-iconic lines come off as conversational, rather than scripted. Here is a character plucked from the streets and put on the screen, without angst or artifice, all id and plenty of ego.In his memoir Sonny Boy, Pacino writes about Tony Montana: “His two-dimensionality is the beauty of him for me.” Pacino adds, “De Palma described the movie as an opera because it was bigger than life and everything about it was exaggerated…”The Scarface mimics revel in the same hyperbolic tone and mistake Tony’s bluster for actual daring. While many of the Scarface-influenced movies – Animal, Toxic, Mirzapur – supply versions of the dangerously cool Tony, few of them stick around to see what actually happens to him in the end.Above all, Scarface is unsentimental, yanking us on Tony’s side when the going is good and walking away without shedding tears when he gets what coming to him.
