Scarface: A Classic Remake of a Classic

Lacking fresh ideas for new plots, Hollywood producers and directors often go back a few years or even a few decades to borrow old ideas. Using an old idea to attract a completely new audience, thus, remaking a movie, can be tricky sometimes. Many attempts to remake a movie for a new generation fail and even those remakes that do go on to earn success, they still fail to capture the glory and popularity to match their predecessors.

But if there is any one movie that succeeded in capturing the popularity, if not outright blowing away its predecessor’s popularity, it would be 1983’s Scarface, director Brian De Palma’s re-telling of the 1932 classic of the same name.

With its use of heavy profanity and the type of graphic violence that was rarely seen outside the horror movie genre that time, 1983’s Scarface became a classic and major cultural icon in its own right, a feat never accomplished by a remake before or since then. Very few big screen bad guys have been as beloved and managed to create as a huge a fan base and popularity as Tony Montana did.

And although he would go on to star in numerous more notable films and even winning an Oscar for his role in 1991’s Scent of a Woman, Al Pacino will always be best remembered for playing American cinema’s favorite baddie, Tony Montana, in Scarface.

Because of its large amount of graphic violence and language, the movie was initially given an “X” rating by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA). Brian De Palma had to re-edit the movie three times to satisfy an “R” rating. But because movie studio executives really couldn’t tell the difference between the “final” cut and the first cut, De Palma was still able to release the unedited first cut of the film to theaters. It was not until the film had been released on videocassette months later that he confessed to the switch.

And what was finally shown to American audiences was one of most gritty, graphic dramas ever shown. Although fictional, the movie also introduce to America the plight that newly-freed Cuban refugees face when released into American society on their own.

The movie continues to endures with those of us recall watching it in movie theaters back in 1983 and it has also become a hit to those of us who weren’t around then. Gangsta hiphop stars often pay tribute to Tony Montana in their lyrics. One of Montana’s lines in the movie, “I always tell the truth, even when I lie”, is an often repeated quote.

It’s too bad that the Academy voters couldn’t see past the violence to at least give this movie a Best Picture Oscar nod.