Scarface (1983)
Director: Brian De Palma
Update of 1932 movie “Scarface, the Shame of the Nation”
Screenplay: by Oliver Stone
Actors: Al Pacino, Steven Bauer, Michelle Pfeiffer, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, Robert Loggia, Miriam Colon, F. Murray Abraham, Paul Shenar, Harris Yulin
BUD: Those folks looks and dresses just like them down to the legion.
BRIDEY: For some of us the eighties never die.
BRIDEY: Why do you suppose Castro dumped all those jailbirds on the shores of the U.S.?
BUD: Out of the kindness of his heart. ‘Cause he loved them so.
BRIDEY: The crooks or the Yanks?
BUD: Both.
BRIDEY: T’isn’t the first time the dregs of a foreign land have been dumped on America’s green shores. England did it regular as death and taxes.
BUD: It’s what made America great.
BRIDEY: Tell that to Michael Moore.
BUD: We should have killed you people when we had the chance.
BRIDEY: Ah, hindsight. Well,you’re stuck with us now.
BUD: Tony Montana entered the room with a challenging air, like a farmer with pig manure on his boots and a sawed off shotgun in his pocket who silently dares the folks at the bank to tell him he smells…
BRIDEY: See the way he smiles at his sister? Something funny about that, ain’t there?
BUD: Remember that old priest? The one that used to say, “Oh how I love the smell of incest in church”?
BRIDEY: That’s not the woman for you, Tony! Ain’t a pick on her! You could slide her under a door! If she bends over she’ll snap like a twig!
BUD: Yeah. Now your sister”?there’s a woman!
BRIDEY: This puts me in mind of ‘Pulp Fiction'”?Pfeiffer’s hairstyle, her rich drug dealer husband, the crack she keeps on snuffing up her nose. I wonder how many times Tarantino saw this film?
BUD: Pacino does a pretty good Hispanic accent.
BRIDEY: You think so ’cause you never get to listen to any Hispanics.
BRIDEY: Not much.
BUD: French, Mi’kmaq, Germans, Arabs, Greeks, but relatively few Hispanics here in the province. Remember that Mexican exchange student in high school? It was like the Martians had landed.
BRIDEY: Is Tony Montana a bad guy? Or is he a good guy driven to desperation by poverty and the baubles held out by consumer America? Or is he filled with a sense of emptiness he desperately seeks to fill? As the utilitarian philosophers say, everyone seeks happiness as their highest goal, we just differ in what constitutes happiness and in where we seek it. Too many of us seek happiness in ways that destroy us. This is the essence of the human tragedy.
BUD: Did you read that on the back of the video box?
BRIDEY: No. Sometimes this late at night I start to make a little sense.
BUD: A little. What’s this on your list?
BRIDEY: It’s on standby. I’ll need to see it again.
Bud and Bridey only watch old movies. If you’re looking for reviews of more recent films, let the Voice editor know, or inquire about writing for The Voice.
By Wanda Waterman St. Louis, with Steven St. Louis.