Director Brian De Palma and screenwriter Oliver Stone’s Scarface arrives on Blu-ray, no doubt bringing great joy to its legion of fans. The 1983 crime epic received decidedly mixed notices from critics during its original run. To its detractors, Al Pacino’s portrayal of drug kingpin Tony Montana was considered over the top. Michelle Pfeiffer, very early in her career, was labeled the opposite – boring and wooden. The nearly three hour running time seemed excessive to many, considering the plot isn’t exactly labyrinthine in design. And the constant graphic violence and free-flowing expletives were viewed as needlessly excessive.
Fast forward over a quarter century later, Scarface is hailed by many as a classic. However, many of those complaints hold true. The film runs nearly three hour, wearing out its welcome by at least a half hour. Pacino dispenses of all the subtlety of his truly great performances (Serpico, Dog Day Afternoon, The Godfather I and II), turning Montana into a grotesque caricature. The movie has gained immense popularity, reflexively referred to as a masterpiece of the organized crime genre. Despite these claims, Scarface remains terminally shallow. The flimsy characterizations are a reflection of Stone’s threadbare storytelling in the screenplay.
Cuban refugee Tony Montana arrives in Miami and quickly becomes involved in the dealing of drugs, taking up with a dealer named Frank (Robert Loggia, another reliable actor wasted here). Tony takes Frank’s girlfriend Elvira (Pfeiffer, displaying none of the smoky charisma that would make her a star). He kills his way to the upper echelon of the Miami drug scene. Life begins to spiral out of control as Tony delves further and further into cocaine addiction.
A life of crime won’t get you anywhere in the end, as Scarface makes bluntly clear. Along the way there are lots of gruesome deaths and mountains of coke snorted. But if you’re watching the movie for those elements (and the multitude of oft-quoted lines, à la “Say hello to my little friend,” which have become crushingly boring clichés), the movie should be viewed as something of a guilty pleasure and nothing more.
It’s hard to imagine Scarface looking better on a home video format than it does on Blu-ray. The 1080p VC-1 encode offers a consistently strong image. As always with older movies, there is justified concern over whether digital noise reduction will be applied. Most of Scarface still looks authentically grainy, with a natural film-like quality indicative of the period in which it was made. The colors have never looked more vivid, especially blood red. Some of the darker scenes are lacking in fine detail, but overall the level of detail is quite impressive. There weren’t any noticeable problems with the source print, which was free of dirt specs and scratches.
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