There's too much expertise, too much sheer love of movie-making up there on the screen for Scarface to be deemed a failure. But the director's failure to follow through makes this a too-long movie that comes up short.

| May 12, 2023

Other than an unflinching, intense and extraordinary performance from Al Pacino as the Cuban-born gangster Tony Montana, this gruesome offering has little to recommend.

| Dec 3, 2018

Stone sticks all too closely to the dated plot structure of the original movie, and such melodramatic flourishes as Montana's incestuous attraction for his sister now seem completely ludicrous.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Dec 9, 2015

It is a serious, often hilarious peek under the rock where nightmares strut in $800 suits and Armageddon lies around the next twist of treason.

| Jul 30, 2014

Performances are all extremely effective, with Pacino leading the way.

| Feb 23, 2012

Still a must-see for Pacino's potent and influential performance.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 24, 2009

Scarface has become a touchstone of pop culture, one of the half dozen or so most frequently referenced films of our era.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Aug 24, 2009

This almost Jacobean tale of drug gangsters in 1980s Miami is rather too long for the points it makes, but is nevertheless riveting and still, after 26 years, remarkably fresh.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 24, 2009

To call the whole thing visceral is a palpable understatement.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 21, 2009

As stylized social realism gives way to wigged-out Faustian fantasy, the would-be devastating effects have an oddly slapstick effect.

| Feb 21, 2007

Although the film depicts a nightmarish world, it's also very funny.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Sep 23, 2006

An unashamed study of selfish, sadistic criminality, and all the better for it.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 9, 2006

A slyly ironic vision of America's still-thriving meritocracy.

| Original Score: B+ | May 4, 2005

What were Pacino's detractors hoping for? Something internal and realistic? Low key? The Tony Montana character is above all a performance artist, a man who exists in order to gloriously be himself.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Jan 15, 2004

I like it as a kind of B-movie version of The Godfather. There are a lot of classic lines and a handful of memorably horrific scenes ...

Full Review | Sep 29, 2003

The dominant mood of the film is anything but funny. It is bleak and futile: What goes up must always come down. When it comes down in Scarface, the crash is as terrifying as it is vivid and arresting.

| May 20, 2003

This is very much a film of the 80s in its portrayal not of moral decline (there is little declining left to do) but of unstoppable ego-centrism. With guns.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 17, 2001

Perfomances are excellent, and despite its moralistic conclusion, the film has since become de rigueur viewing for crack barons, who know a good shoot-em-up when they see one.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Jan 1, 2000