In an era of pure id, Howard Hawks’s Scarface still manages to feel especially elemental.

| Dec 26, 2024

A wild and thrilling gangster epic that plays like a proto action film.

| Nov 23, 2024

Ninety-plus years have done little to dilute the swaggering power of Howard Hawks’s Pre-code American gangster masterpiece.

| Nov 17, 2024

Hawks’s Scarface still has the power to exhilarate and shock. It is a plunge into a bitter realm with its own rules and rhythms, where bullets fall like hard rain and leave holes like countless jagged stars.

| Nov 14, 2024

Hawks builds it with a consistent tone that rarely loses its brutal effect to capture the rise and fall of a violent gangster. [Full review in Spanish]

| Original Score: 7/10 | Jul 21, 2022

A preeminent, seminal gangster flick.

| Original Score: 10/10 | Jan 2, 2022

Among other things, Ben Hecht was a Chicago newspaperman, a playwright, author of maybe the funniest American novel...Hecht defines the writer-producer relationship...

| Jan 26, 2021

What it has, and what the many other gangster films that have followed it have not, is an ice-cold anger of purpose.

| Jul 8, 2020

Scarface is a gangland epic, a drama In the raw, bold, brutal and terrifyingly realistic. A high-powered dramatic production that packs a lot of excitement and entertainment, full of brutal killings and yet with some glorious emotional thrills.

| Apr 9, 2020

If you are fond of an evening of bloodshed and some "stout" first-rate acting from an excellent cast, you will find it will provide you with all the cinematic beer and skittles you have been looking for.

| Apr 9, 2020

It is getting very tiresome to see North American film productions insist that the only bad guys exist abroad. Al Capone was born in Brooklyn! [Full Review in Spanish]

| Apr 9, 2020

[Scarface is] a brilliant film thanks mainly to the acting of Paul Muni and Ben Hecht's script.

| Apr 9, 2020

Scarface is a good film because there are real people in it and because in the rare lulls between gunfire its touch is delicate and sure.

| Apr 9, 2020

[UPDATED 2024 4K + BLU-RAY REVIEW] A Molotov cocktail of a movie.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Dec 22, 2019

A passionate, strong, archaic photographic miracle: the rise and fall of an ignorant, blustery, pathetically childish punk (Paul Muni) in an avalanche of rich, dark-dark images.

| Jun 14, 2019

It is remarkable for admirable direction and brilliant acting. Howard Hawks has done his work with skill and knowledge.

| Jan 8, 2018

The pre-noir gangster genre was in many ways defined by the innovative approaches taken by Hawks in this film.

| Original Score: 89/100 | Dec 30, 2014

Scarface is one of best of the early gangster movies; its wit and building velocity speeds it past Little Caesar and keeps pace with Public Enemy.

| Jul 30, 2014

By far the most visually inventive and tonally anarchic movie that Hawks made.

| Jul 30, 2014

The greatest gangster movie of the 1930s -- and that means the greatest ever.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Jul 30, 2014