Palpitating with intensity..
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02/24/04
Scarface (1983)
88
%
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:49
Fresh:43
Rotten:6
Average Rating:7.4/10
Synopsis: Brian De Palma's blood-and-sun-drenched saga of a Cuban deportee's rise to the top of Miami's cocaine business has become something of a popular classic since its release; it's been referenced in... [More]
Starring: Al Pacino, Michelle Pfeiffer, Steven Bauer, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio
Director: Brian De Palma
Reviews for Scarface
Top CriticTo be honest, Scarface isn't exactly what you could call a 'good' movie. It's overwritten, overacted and overdirected (not to mention overlong). And yet, against the odds, it still works.
03/05/05
Painted in exuberant, extravagant swaths of red, Brian De Palma's foolhardy epic is a thing of delirious grandeur
08/28/06
As time goes by, films like Scarface only gain in their importance.
02/27/04
Watching some 20 years down the line, [Pacino's performance is] laughably campy in a manner that the rest of this bloated, self-important film doesn’t seem to appreciate.
01/01/00
Still a must-see for Pacino's potent and influential performance.
08/24/09
Top CriticSubtle it ain't, but just try turning your eyes away from this study in stylistic excess.
11/04/03
The dominant mood of the film is anything but funny. It is bleak and futile: What goes up must always come down. When it comes down in Scarface, the crash is as terrifying as it is vivid and arresting.
05/20/03
Top CriticAt a certain point, Scarface sheds its moralistic pretense and becomes a slick come-on to impressionable youth
10/08/03
Pacino's drug-crazed, bloodshot performance gives this gangster movie a terrifying edge.
08/24/09
...Brian De Palma’s criminally over-the-top remake of the 1932 Howard Hawks gangster classic
02/27/04
What were Pacino's detractors hoping for? Something internal and realistic? Low key? The Tony Montana character is above all a performance artist, a man who exists in order to gloriously be himself.
01/15/04
Top CriticDe Palma's film is now back on the big screen and looking better than ever.
08/24/09
Pacino, of course, goes way over the top and through the floor on the other side.
08/13/07
Scarface could be the male moviegoer's answer to Mommie Dearest ... when it's not grotesquely melodramatic, it somehow manages to be incredibly dull.
07/10/07
This is very much a film of the 80s in its portrayal not of moral decline (there is little declining left to do) but of unstoppable ego-centrism. With guns.
04/17/01
An unashamed study of selfish, sadistic criminality, and all the better for it.
02/09/06
[Pacino's] grandstanding performance is still hard to resist and symbolises the baroque excess of this shockingly violent gangster classic.
08/24/09
Unbalanced as it may be, it's an exhilarating picture.
09/10/02
DePalma loves blood and guts-nothing wrong with that!
12/22/03
Latest News for Scarface
March 21, 2006:
"Godfather" Video Game Debuts Today
Variety was kind enough to remind me that the new "Godfather" video game hits the shelves today, which is good news because I'm kind of a sucker for (GOOD) movie-based... More...
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