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

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 brilliant film thanks mainly to the acting of Paul Muni and Ben Hecht's script.

| Apr 9, 2020

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

Scarface is a grisly, exciting gangster picture, based in part upon the career of Alphonse ("Scarface," "Snorkey") Capone.

| Mar 2, 2010

Atmospheric, mesmerising and darkly humourous with a sizzling script and cast. This is a true classic of its genre.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Mar 2, 2010

Howard Hawks's 1932 masterpiece is a dark, brutal, exhilaratingly violent film, blending comedy and horror in a manner that suggests Chico Marx let loose with a live machine gun.

| Mar 2, 2010

Scarface contains more cruelty than any of its gangster picture predecessors, but there's a squarer for every killing. The blows are always softened by judicial preachments and sad endings for the sinners.

| Oct 18, 2008

Its seminal importance in the early gangster movie cycle outweighed only by its still exhilarating brilliance, this Howard Hughes production was the one unflawed classic the tycoon was involved with.

| Jun 24, 2006

This is an excellent diversion for those who like to take an afternoon or an evening off to study the activities of cowardly thugs. In it Paul Muni as Scarface Tony Camonte gives a compelling portrayal.

| Jan 28, 2006