Al Pacino gives a tour de force performance as Cuban immigrant Tony Montana. I liken his character in many ways to Jo Pesci's Tommy from Goodfellas, a character who despite his slight frame is larger than life and you never know what will happen next. Volatile to say the least, it's as if he suffers from the Napoleon complex.
Pacino insisted that the Hispanic members of the crew spoke to him in Spanish and he kept the accent up all the way through the production even off camera. His performance is staggering and his character appears in every scene throughout the entire movie.
Everything about Scarface is OTT, the soundtrack, colours, characters, violence, drugs, language, everything and this is why Tony Montana never appears out of place with his larger than life persona.
Extremely popular among real life drug barons and would-be gangsters largely due to the main characters kick ass attitude and all out ballsy outlook on life.
This is a fantastic movie which is endlessly quotable and is easily Brian De Palma's best work, if seeing for the first time..............brace yourself!
The transfer.........................
Universal have granted this film with a VC-1 encoded, 2.35:1 framed, 1080p transfer onto a 50GB Blu-ray disc of very inconsistent appearance. What a shame!
Not sure where to start really it's so all over the place. When it's good it's really good but when it's bad it's really bad.
Firstly this is an improvement over the previous DVD releases especially colour saturation. The reds are extremely vibrant and strong. Skin tones do appear accurate and lifelike. Detail is another marked improvement especially on foreground objects and fabrics.
The sound is a marked improvement as well although I found the gun sounds in the final scene to be strange.
The issues range from edge enhancement which has been applied liberally, this results in the haloing of both people and objects. DNR which has been applied for the grain which results in loss of detail. Crush is another problem, with serious delineation issues apparent in almost every dark scene, this means that we have no definition between objects, dark hair and clothing when combined with night skies just seem to mould into one black blob.
The grain is heavy with this movie which must be attributed to the film stock used, I'm not sure whether this was Brian De Palma's intended appearance but with the majority of Blu-ray viewers wanting a clear image Universal have attempted to reduce it (DNR) but this has impacted on the detail in a number of scenes and resulted in the image appearing washed out in places.
Overall like I've said it is the best it's ever looked and is worth the upgrade, serious fans will forgive its shortcomings, just not so sure about the casual viewer.
Film 5/5 Transfer 2.5/5
This movie needs a complete restoration and digital reworking. Give it to the Lowry Digital team.