Scarface Remains one of Pacino's Best Films

One of my favorite actors is Al Pacino, known for films such as Dog Day Afternoon, Serpico, The Godfather trilogy, Heat, The Devil's Advocate, Donnie Brasco, and Scent of a Woman. I think that one of his best roles has to be Cuban drug lord Tony Montana in Scarface (1983). It is a re-make of the 1932 film which was directed by Howard Hawks and written by Ben Hecht. The 1983 version was dedicated to Hawks and Hecht. The 1932 film was based on the life of mobster Al Capone, in the days of prohibition.The 1983 film dealt not with the illegal sale of alcohol, but cocaine. The Pacino film was directed by Brian DePalma, who also directed The Untouchables, Carrie and Carlito's Way. It was produced by Martin Bregman who also worked with Pacino on Serpico, Dog Day Afternoon and Carlito's Way. The screenplay was written by Oliver Stone, who also wrote films such as Wall Street, Midnight Express and Born on the Fourth of July. Ironically, Stone fought cocaine addiction himself while writing the screenplay. In addition to Pacino, the film co-stars Steven Bauer as Manny Ribera, Tony's right hand man. Michelle Pfeiffer plays Elvira Hancock, the cold, distant girlfriend of Tony's mentor, Frank Lopez, played by Robert Loggia. Tony's sister Gina is played by Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio.

The film was not loved by everyone. Roger Ebert gave it 4 stars (his highest rating), but film critic Leonard Maltin gave it a poor review. Despite being nominated for 3 Golden Globes, it was also nominated for a Razzie award for worst director, Brian DePalma. Some saw the film as being too violent, with too much profanity. There are 42 people killed in the film. It originally recieved an X rating by the MPAA. The filmmakers knew they could not release an X rated film and have a wide audience. They edited the film, cutting out a lot of the violence. The rating was revised to an R. But, before its release, DePalma actually submitted the original X rated version to theaters. Yes, the film is violent, but so is the world of cocaine trafficking. I see it as being an accurate depiction of that lifestyle.

Scarface is about Tony Montana, who was able to leave Cuba in 1980 when Castro released thousands of refugees to go to Miami. It turned out that many who were coming to America had criminal records. Tony and his friend Manny work in a restaurant briefly washing dishes but decide that they need to sell drugs in order to make some real money. Tony learns about the business from Frank Lopez and eventually surpasses him and takes his girlfriend as well. Scarface is about Tony climbing to the highest level of being a drug lord, but through that process he loses his friends, his family, and himself. It is a portrait of a man who seeks power but only finds weakness and paranoia. He turns to drugs in order to escape from himself. His descent into cocaine addiction is swift, disturbing, and it has a violent ending.

This could have been a very different film. John Travolta was considered for the role of Manny. Robert DeNiro was considered for the role of Tony, but he turned it down. Sidney Lumet was the first choice for director but he did not take the job. The following actresses turned down the role of Elvira: Rosanna Arquette, Melanie Griffith, Kim Basinger, Jodie Foster, Brooke Shields. Two others who auditioned were Geena Davis and Sharon Stone.

A scene in the movie has Tony looking up at a blimp with the message "The World is Yours". He has a statue in his house with a globe above with those words on it. The 1932 film had this phrase on a billboard when Tony Camonte died (Paul Muni).

Scarface has become a bit of a cult classic. It is popular with many in the hip hop community and in 2006 a Scarface video game was released. Its budget was $25 million and it has made $45 million in the US and $65 million worldwide at the box office. It is not a short film, with a length of 170 minutes. But, I put it up there with 2 other favorites, Casino and The Godfather, both which are also about 3 hours. It is long, but it takes time to tell the story, and I think it is a well crafted screenplay. Tony Montana is a hero in the same way as characters from films such as Good Fellas, The Godfather, Casino, Donnie Brasco, Carlito's Way and even Tony Soprano from the HBO show The Sopranos. People see the organized crime lifestyle as glamorous and powerful, with fancy cars, houses and everything a person could want. Those things are part of the lifestyle, but people in that life also sell their souls.


*Some material from imdb.com.

Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps Falls Short of the Original

I really wanted this to be as good as the first one, which came out in 1987. Like most sequels, the original was so much better. Money Never Sleeps has Michael Douglas returning as financial giant Gordon Gekko. The film opens with his getting released from prison for insider trading. Like the first film, he takes a young broker under his wing, this time played by Shia LeBeouf. Gekko's original protegee, Bud Fox, played by Charlie Sheen, has a cameo with a few lines. It just so happens that LeBeouf is engaged to Gekko's estranged daughter. This is ironic since she is turned off to Wall Street traders by the actions of her corrupt father. She is played by Carey Mulligan, and she had a much better script to work with last year when she starred in the Oscar nominated An Education. Josh Brolin plays a slimy adversary of Gekko's who LeBeouf ends up working for. Oliver Stone appears in a cameo in this film as well as many CNBC personalities such as Maria Bartiromo and Jim Cramer. Other stars included Frank Langella and Susan Sarandon. The script is too long, not organized well, and I found myself looking at my watch wondering when it would end. In a great film you care about the characters and a great film will leave you wanting more. The Wall Street of 1987 had that effect on me. Still all of these years later I can watch it again and again. It was so quotable, and modern day traders still remember it as the ultimate movie about high finance in New York City. So many artists have their biggest hits early in their career and they spend the rest of their careers trying to get back that magic that they once had in their work. I am beginning to feel that way about Oliver Stone. The actors and the sets and costumes can all be good, but if the script is not polished, you don't have a hit. Wall Street 2 needed a better script that could interest people as much as the first one.

Oliver Stone's 1987 Masterpiece, Wall Street

Later this year a sequel to Wall Street will be released. The film will be called Wall Street:Money Never Sleeps, which was a line from the first movie. It has been 23 years since the original film came out, and it is still the quintissential movie about New York stockbrokers and the world of high finance. An Oliver Stone film has never had a sequel. According to a documentary on the Blu Ray DVD version of Wall Street, stock brokers still quote lines from the film all of these years later. Traders have said that this movie is the best representation of what really goes on at the New York stock exchange. Michael Douglas says he gets people coming up to him all of the time telling him that his character influenced them to go into finance. He says that people do not seem to realize that his character of Gordon Gekko was not a good guy, but a bad person whom no one should view as a role model. Nevertheless, people seem to love the bad characters more than the good ones.

The multi-talented Oliver Stone co-wrote and directed Wall Street after writing and directing Platoon just a year earlier. He has an impressive resume, having written Scarface, Midnight Express and Conan the Barbarian. Post-Wall Street his writer/director resume grew with the films Talk Radio, Born on the Fourth of July, JFK, Nixon, Natural Born Killers, and more. His father had worked as a Wall Street trader, so he wanted to make a film about what goes on in that environment.

Wall Street is the story of Bud Fox (Charlie Sheen), a young hotshot stock broker who wants to make as much money as he can, and he will do anything to get what he wants. He persistently calls Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas) every day in an attempt to meet him and give him stock tips to make him money. Gekko is a giant in the finance industry. He buys companies, breaks them into pieces and sells the parts for enourmous profit. He is one of the richest people on Wall Street and Bud Fox becomes his protege. Fox realizes that to make the kind of money Gekko makes, one needs to engage in the illegal practice of insider trading. Fox's dad Carl (Martin Sheen) is an airline mechanic for Blue Star airlines and Bud gets inside information about that company that he gives to Gekko. Carl Fox wants his son to be successful, but he also wants him to stay on the right side of the law. He is concerned that Gekko has taken his son under his wing, and he does not like that his son seems to idolize Gordon more than him.

Wall Street is a morality tale. There is good money to be made as a stockbroker who follows the rules, but one who breaks the law can make endless money, but this comes with consequences. Hal Holbrook plays Lou Mannheim, Bud Fox's boss. He has a feeling that Bud is getting stock tips illegally and he has a memorable quote in the film:

"Man looks in the abyss, there's nothing staring back at him. At that moment, man finds his character. And that is what keeps him out of the abyss."

Lou also says: "The main thing about money, Bud, is that it makes you do things you don't want to do."

The most quoted line from the film is when Gekko says "Greed is good." This is the context of where he says that, at a stockholder's meeting.


"Teldar Paper, Mr. Cromwell, Teldar Paper has 33 different vice presidents each earning over 200 thousand dollars a year. Now, I have spent the last two months analyzing what all these guys do, and I still can't figure it out. One thing I do know is that our paper company lost 110 million dollars last year, and I'll bet that half of that was spent in all the paperwork going back and forth between all these vice presidents. The new law of evolution in corporate America seems to be survival of the unfittest. Well, in my book you either do it right or you get eliminated. In the last seven deals that I've been involved with, there were 2.5 million stockholders who have made a pretax profit of 12 billion dollars. Thank you. I am not a destroyer of companies. I am a liberator of them! The point is, ladies and gentleman, that greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right, greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms; greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge has marked the upward surge of mankind. And greed, you mark my words, will not only save Teldar Paper, but that other malfunctioning corporation called the USA. Thank you very much."

There are so many outstanding quotes from this film. The relationship between Bud Fox and his father explodes with this exchange:

Carl Fox: He's using you, kid. He's got your prick in his back pocket, but you're too blind to see it.
Bud Fox: No. What I see is a jealous old machinist who can't stand the fact that his son has become more successful than he has!
Carl Fox: What you see is a guy who never measured a man's success by the size of his WALLET!
Bud Fox: That's because you never had the GUTS to go out into the world and stake your own claim!
[Long Pause]
Carl Fox: Boy, if that's the way you feel, I must have done a really lousy job as a father.


Gekko and Bud Fox see the world of Wall Street as not unlike a conflict on the battlefield. At one point when about to buy stock, Gekko says: "We're in the killzone." Bud Fox, quoting "The Art of War" says: "Sun-tzu: If your enemy is superior, evade him. If angry, irritate him. If equally matched, fight, and if not split and reevaluate." Gordon Gekko enjoys the thrill of being in a battle with someone else. There is a scene at Gordon's house where he is negotiating a stock deal with a rival. He shows off his collection of vintage pistols. Stone has drawn comparisons between the world of Wall Street, the Vietnam war battles, and the drug dealers in Miami he chronicled in the film Scarface.

I think that Wall Street is Stone's best film. Like directors such as Hitchcock and Scorsese, Stone had a cameo in his film where he played a broker on the phone during a montage of deals being made. Richard Gere and Warren Beatty almost got the role of Gekko instead of Douglas. Tom Cruise almost was given the part of Bud Fox. Stone worked with him in Born on the Fourth of July. Michael Douglas deservedly won a best actor Oscar for his pivotal role. The storyline was loosely based on Ivan Boesky and the insider trading scandals of the 1980s. Daryl Hannah played the role of Bud Fox's girlfriend and she has never seen the film. She has said that she had an "unhealthy working relationship" with Oliver Stone. I love all aspects of this film, even the soundtrack. Frank Sinatra's Fly Me to the Moon plays over the opening credits and later a song by The Talking Heads is used (This Must be the Place-Naive Melody). The film Boiler Room (2000) is a must see for fans of Wall Street. It is also about stock brokers, and the characters in the film are obsessed with Gordon Gekko and Oliver Stone's portrayal of the world of finance. Another film that Wall Street fans should check out is American Psycho (2000) since it also features the 1980s New York yuppie era. It is based on a novel by Bret Easton Ellis (Less than Zero), and it stars Christian Bale as a self obsessed, materialistic psychotic executive.

* Some information from imdb.com.