History Film / Scarface1983

''Scarface'''s graphic violence and language originally drew controversy and was originally panned by most, if not all critics, but has since been not only reappraised but also developed a cult following and become an influential popular work. It was especially influential on HipHop culture.

* AddictionPowered: Tony's cocaine allowed him to take a ''lot'' of punishment before going down.

* PragmaticVillainy: Frank Lopez operates his business "under the radar", not flaunting his wealth and operating a legitimate business with his auto dealership. This allows him to not be noticed by the police or being able to ally with the corrupt ones, and notes that the drug lords who want more than necessary die out. He's aghast when Tony of his own accord makes a deal with Alejandro Sosa to expand Frank's drug reach beyond Miami, and puts a hit out on him as a result.
-->'''Frank''': Remember when I told you when you first started working for me: the guys that last in this business are the guys who fly straight. Low-key, quiet. But the guys who want it all -- ''chicas'', champagne, flash... they don't last.

* OhCrap: Not said, but Ernie and Chi Chi definitely looked at each other to convey this when Tony blew Alberto's head off to effectively call off the hit they were supposed to perform.
** Tony's banker displays a more subdued type of this expression. At first, when Tony and the crew bring huge duffel bags full of cash into the bank, he's eager to meet with them and start up a business relationship. As they keep making visit after visit, though, he stares out the window at them with a completely stunned look on his face.

* GoryDiscretionShot: The chainsaw scene is a shining example; not even [=DePalma=] would include such a violent act in his movie. It's easy to forget that we don't actually see what the chainsaw does to Angel.

* GilliganCut: When Tony gets busted in a sting, complete with laundering on camera, he boasts to the officers that his lawyer will easily get him off the hook and that the cops will soon be [[ReassignedToAntarctica working in Alaska]], so "dress warm". The next scene has Tony's lawyer admitting that the case against Tony would be so airtight that the best he could do for Tony would be 3-5 years in prison.

* ForeignRemake: [[UsefulNotes/{{Bollywood}} Bollywood's]] [[{{Film/Agneepath}} Agneepath 1990]], albeit somewhat loosely.

* TranquilFury: Tony does this when he kills Manny out of rage for sleeping with his sister, Gina before she revealed that they're married. In fact, instead of yelling, he looks at him in (though furious) silence and shot him without saying a word.

* CanonForeigner: Alejandro Sosa doesn't have an equivalent character in the original film, though he bares some resemblance to Inspector Guarino insofar as he becomes Tony's ultimate antagonist and the cause of death. In the original, Tony successfully killed off all potential rivals, and his death was at the hands of the police instead of other criminals.

''Scarface'''s graphic violence and language originally drew controversy and was originally panned by most critics, but has since been not only reappraised but also developed a cult following and become an influential popular work. It was especially influential on HipHop culture.

* ArtisticLicensePharmacology: This movie seems to take place in an alternate reality where no one overdoses on cocaine... On the other hand, it is pretty realistic in regards to the long-term effects of cocaine use, namely paranoia.

* BothSidesHaveAPoint: When talking about the other to Tony, Sosa and Frank do make good points about each other.

** Frank Lopez’s warning to Tony about Sosa holds more water; when he mentions that Sosa would send a hit squad after him if the Bolivian crime lord didn't get his way, and that in general Sosa kills anyone who isn't 100% obedient to him. This was shown to be [[spoiler:true after Sosa's fury with Tony over the death of Alberto as he killed all of Tony's members and the crumbling drug lord himself in retaliation]].

** Gina was fully willing to look the other way to Tony's criminal activity(and as Tony found out, she wasn't exactly an angel herself). But as time went on, she realized what a terrible person he really was at least becoming.

** Notable in being the first movie ever to have over 200 uses of the word.

* ConspicuousConsumption: Tony goes all in for this after he takes over Lopez's operation. A huge mansion, tigers and gaudy statuary on the grounds, a beauty salon for Gina, the works.

* DefrostingIceQueen: Played with. It's made clear that Elvira doesn't ''love'' Tony so much as she ''tolerates'' him. He ends up taking her along after Frank's death, and the "Push It To The Limit" montage shows that she's more interested in indulging her drug/alcohol habits instead. She later looks at their marriage and life as them being "losers" and leaves, despite Tony's efforts to make her stay. But there were times when they started to get along - a key scene in support of this trope is when Tony succeeds in making Elvira laugh in spite of herself when he puts on her hat.

* DroneOfDread: The score uses this particularly whenever Tony sees his sister Gina cavorting with another man.

* EvenBadMenLoveTheirMamas: Tony tries to provide for his mother, but the relationship is strained due to her being aware of Tony's criminal activities. She refuses any money and demands he leave.

--> '''Tony Montana''': What you lookin' at? You all a bunch of fuckin' assholes. D'you know why? You don't have the guts to be what you wanna be. You need people like me. You need people like me so you can point your fuckin' fingers and say, "That's the bad guy." So... what that make you? Good? You're not good. You just know how to hide, how to lie. Me, I don't have that problem. Me, I always tell the truth. Even when I lie. So say good night to the bad guy! Come on. The last time you gonna see a bad guy like this again, let me tell you. Come on. Make way for the bad guy. There's a bad guy comin' through! Better get outta his way!

* {{Foreshadowing}}: When Frank tells Tony that Sosa will send a squad of hitmen after him if he doesn't make good on his new deal that Tony negotiated with Sosa on his behalf. Guess what happens to Tony at the end?
* ForWantOfANail: Riding high as a kingpin, Tony gets fed up with his money launderer's high fees (on what by that point is only score-keeping the money) and goes shopping for cheaper. [[spoiler:Unsurprisingly, the cheap one is also a federal sting.]] Everything else bad in the second half more or less flows from this.

* GettingHighOnTheirOwnSupply: The TropeNamer, and quite possibly the TropeCodifier, as Tony Montana is arguably the most well known victim of this trope in fiction. The name, as mentioned in the description, is taken from a line in the movie where Tony Montana is given advice from Elvira Hancock and Frank Lopez. Advice Tony would ignore, which resulted in the series of {{Tragic Mistake}}s that would lead to his downfall.

** Sosa... until the games and ''Scarred For Life''. However, it can be inferred that Sosa would have been arrested since he failed to assassinate that journalist who would have implicated him.

** Tony's mother accuses him of giving Cubans everywhere a bad name, and one of the cops who arrests him for money laundering tells him, "You call yourself a Cuban? You make a real Cuban throw up!"

** During dinner with her husband and Manny at some fancy restaurant, Elvie gets tired with Tony's continuous taunting and fires right back at him. [[spoiler:[[ScrewThisImOuttaHere And then she walks out on him and is not seen again]]]]. After that, Tony himself gives quite an epic one towards the crowd ''while he's drunk'' (see EvilVersusEvil above).

* RiseAndFallGangsterArc: The film depicts Tony making a name for himself in the cocaine trade, eventually becoming a fabulously wealthy drug kingpin. However, his [[GettingHighOnTheirOwnSupply addiction to cocaine]], fits of rage, and impulsive behaviour ultimately lead to [[spoiler:his undoing and death]].

* RuderAndCruder: The TropeCodifier -- ''Scarface'' was one of, if not ''the'', most profanity-laced films of its time, and its popularity and acclaim helped to normalize the use of frequent profanity in film.

* SettingUpdate: Keeping in line with how the 1932 version was set contemporary to its release, the remake takes place in its own "today," the early 80's.

* SuddenPrincipledStand: Throughout the film Tony has been a drug lord, a murderer, generally getting worse and worse. But seeing [[spoiler:Sosa's hitman about to kill the target while the man's wife and kid are in the same car]] makes him draw the line.

* {{Tragedy}}: A classical crime tragedy. Tony is shown to be a ruthless criminal who nonetheless has redeeming qualities, is loyal to his friends and cares for his family. However his many flaws and an increasingly severe cocaine addiction brings a swift end to his criminal empire [[spoiler:and in the end, Tony loses everything he built and everyone who ever cared about him is either dead or hates his guts.]] Even at the end, [[AlasPoorVillain it's generally hard not to feel bad for Tony]].

** Getting high on his own supply brought its own set of problems, among them an impaired sense of judgement. This combined with his increasingly violent protectiveness about his sister resulted in him [[spoiler:gunning down his right hand man Manny, who had just married Gina]].

* TranquilFury: Tony does this when when he kills Manny out of rage for sleeping with his sister, Gina, before she revealed that they're married. In fact, instead of yelling, he looks at him in (though furious) silence and shot him without saying a word.

* UriahGambit: It is very heavily implied that Omar Suarez knew Hector and crew were likely to turn on Tony, and sent him on the "job" so he'd be killed.

* VillainousBreakdown: [[spoiler:Tony]] in the last several minutes of the movie. [[spoiler:He is left alone in his office, coked out of his mind, being hit with the HeelRealization of killing his best friend Manny. Seeing Sosa's men on the security monitors, he tries to recover. He tries to gather his thoughts, muttering to himself "We gotta get organized", but there's no one to listen. He picks up a phone, but drops it without dialing as there's nobody to call. He needs someone he can trust to help him, but he's either driven away or killed everyone that fits that profile. He's all alone and about to die and almost only has himself to blame. The only thing that snaps him out of it is when Gina gets gunned down by said men, and even then it's only enough to make him decide [[RoaringRampageOfRevenge to kill as many of them as he can in blind fury and coke high]].]]

* VillainProtagonist: Tony, a crass criminal drug dealer and occasional hitman, murders his boss to get to the top, is a controlling misogynist who becomes a cocaine-addicted wreck and burns all his bridges on his power-trip.

* WouldHitAGirl: Tony smacks his ''sister'' after standing up to a man he sees groping her ass and taking her in the men's bathroom to do cocaine and make out.

* WouldntHurtAChild: How Tony proves he's not so bad. It's an interesting example, because protecting children by killing Sosa's assassin [[spoiler:leads directly to Tony's death. On the other hand, he's only in that situation because he was becoming worse and ''agreed'' to help kill an innocent man who'd done nothing to him. The moral of that particular story is left ambiguous.]]
* YouBastard: The movie itself spends the first half of its duration challenging our sympathies for the protagonist, then it hits the audience in the face that at least some people in the general public need people like him to point out about who's the "bad guy".

* ClusterFBomb: This [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KANukZsWD9Q video]] sums it all nicely.

* NoodleIncident: We never ''do'' learn how Tony got that scar... though given [[AxCrazy his nature]], there are many plausible scenarios.

* KillEmAll: The film's ending. The only major characters to make it out unscathed are [[spoiler:[[KarmaHoudini Sosa]] and [[ScrewThisImOuttaHere Elvira]].]]

* EvenEvilHasLovedOnes: Tony tries to take care of those he loves even as he becomes an increasingly bigger criminal and acts like a general jerk. His affection for Gina in particular is very strong, although laced with [[BrotherSisterIncest incestuous implications]]. [[spoiler:Subverted later in the film, as he eventually becomes a malignant presence in their lives when he drives Elvira away, kills Manny because he proposed to Gina, and locks Gina up in his own mansion out of an obsession with "protecting" her.]]

** Sosa’s words aren’t without truth regarding Frank; that Frank could possibly have spies infiltrating his own crime syndicate shows that Frank is an idiot who, for all his talk of flying low, has no idea how to keep his men in order and effectively run a business. [[spoiler: Subverted in that Sosa’s isn’t known for being honest, and the fact that Omar may have been a stoolie could have been intentional due to the fact that Frank has law enforcement working under his thumb so Omar could have easily been one of those cops under his thumb at some point who he ordered to help keep his rivals out of the way in the same way he had Mel try to keep Tony out of his way]].

* PlayingGertrude: Miriam Colon, who plays Tony's mother, is only four years older than Creator/AlPacino.

* {{Tragedy}}: A classical crime tragedy. Tony is shown to be a ruthless criminal who nontheless has redeeming qualities, is loyal to his friends and cares for his family. However his many flaws and an increasingly severe cocaine addiction brings a swift end to his criminal empire [[spoiler:and in the end, Tony loses everything he built and everyone who ever cared about him is either dead or hates his guts.]] Even at the end, [[AlasPoorVillain it's generally hard not feel bad for Tony]].

* NoGoodDeedGoesUnpunished: Ironically, despite all the vile things he does over the course of the film, Tony's ONE more-profound act of decency or even good is what ultimately leads to his downfall.

* AintTooProudToBeg: [[spoiler:Frank Lopez desperately pleads for forgiveness from Tony after failing to assassinate him, even offering him $10 million to spare his life. It sort of works, as Tony decides not to kill him, but ultimately fails when Tony instead gets Manny to do the job [[KarmicDeath to make his demise ironic]]]].

** Sosa's sunglasses-wearing enforcer, "The Skull." [[spoiler:He ends up being the one to kill Tony.]]

The film centers on Antonio "Tony" Montana (Pacino), a Cuban refugee deported to Miami during the Mariel Boatlift of 1980, during which UsefulNotes/FidelCastro sent off not only the relatives of Cuban-Americans abroad, but also the dregs of his jails. The film covers Tony's violent rise to the top of Miami's drug trade and his eventual DescentIntoAddiction and paranoia that alienates him from his friends and family.

''Scarface'''s graphic violence and language originally drew controversy and was originally panned by most critics, but has since been not only reappraised, but also developed a cult following and become an influential popular work. It was especially influential on HipHop culture.

* AdaptationalHeroism: Tony Montana has far more moral standards and likable characteristics than Tony Camonte in the Hawks film. It's hard to imagine Camonte [[spoiler:having second thoughts about killing children and putting morality before self-interest the way Montana does. In the Hawks film, Camonte fights and goes down fighting the police, whereas Montana loses to a rival druglord. Furthermore, his incestuous feelings toward his sister are far more ambiguous with Montana, while Camonte leaves little to the imagination.]]

* ArtisticLicensePharmacology: This movie seems to take place in an alternate reality where no one overdoses on cocaine... On the other hand, it is pretty realistic in regards to long term effects of cocaine use, namely paranoia.

* BeingEvilSucks: This trope is definitely made all the more obvious in this version than the original. If you think that being a drug dealer like Tony is a cool thing, then you're out of your fucking mind.

** Later on, Alejandro Sosa, a Bolivian drug lord who is the most powerful gangster we see and Tony's eventual main opposition.

** Sosa’s words aren’t without truth regarding Frank; that Frank could possibly have spies infiltrating his own crime syndicate shows that Frank is an idiot who, for all his talk of flying low, has no idea how to keep his men in order and effectively run a business. [[spoiler: Subverted in that Sosa’s isn’t known for being honest, and the fact that Omar may have been a stoolie could have been intentional due the fact that Frank has law enforcement working under his thumb so Omar could have easily been one of those cops under his thumb at some point who he ordered to help keep his rivals out of the way in the same way he had Mel try to keep Tony out of his way]].

* BottomlessMagazines: Uzi submachine guns are shot as though they had a several-feet-long belt in their magazines. Gun barrels would go red hot after so many bullets in one go [[note]]Al Pacino actually burned his hand pretty badly on the M16, you can see it in the film when he grabs the barrel after a burst of fire and then quickly lets go.[[/note]]; the Uzis don't. Tony's own M16 seems to have the equivalents of Phalanx CIWS ammunition domes for magazines, too. However, it should be noted that in the final shootout, Tony is shown reloading his rifle multiple times.

** Sosa to Tony. He considered Sosa as his equal partner, and enjoyed their working relationship. But when Sosa offers to make Tony's legal problems go away if he carries out a hit on his cartel's behalf, Tony takes it as a personal insult and that Sosa always regarded him as a thug. Seeing no other options though(and refusing to even consider jail time), he complies under duress.
* BrooklynRage: Borderline with Frank Lopez. While Frank has the typical Cuban English accent, he can sometimes berate Tony with a New York accent, as well, with phrase like "conyo my ass."
* BrotherSisterIncest: Tony's violent protectiveness toward Gina has serious elements of this. [[spoiler:She throws it in his face towards the climax, after he killed Manny and had her brought to his house: she pretends to force herself onto Tony so she can kill him. It's more ambiguous than in the original film though.]]

* TheCartel: Led by Sosa from Bolivia, and it is from there that Tony gets most of his drugs that he distributes, [[spoiler: is given a last chance mission to avoid jail time, and after he fails it, it is Sosa's cartel who send their men to kill Tony at the climax of the film]].
* CanonForeigner: Alejandro Sosa doesn't have an equivalent character in the original film, though he bares some resemblance to Inspector Guarino insofar as he becomes Tony's ultimate antagonist and the cause of death. In the original, Tony successfully killed off all potential rivals, and his death was at the hands of police instead of other criminals.

* DespairEventHorizon: When Tony [[spoiler:sees Manny and Gina together, he kills Manny in a fit of anger.]] The reason why it technically fits here instead of MoralEventHorizon is because during his VillainousBreakdown, he subliminally regrets acting on impulse like that. He truly cements it when [[spoiler:one of Sosa's men kills Gina, culminating in an UnstoppableRage.]]
* {{Deuteragonist}}: Manny Ribera, Tony's best friend and [[TheDragon right hand man]].

** Manny Ribera becomes Tony's right hand man in his emerging drug empire. He's relatively tame for a villain.
* DyingMomentOfAwesome: [[spoiler:A coked-up Tony, armed with an M16 with grenade launcher, singlehandedly battles a small army of hitmen while shouting obscenities before a shotgun blast to the back kills him. It's easily the most iconic scene in the movie.]]
* EvenEvilHasLovedOnes: Tony tries to take care of those he loves even as he becomes an increasingly bigger criminal and acting like a general jerk. His affection for Gina in particular is very strong, although laced with [[BrotherSisterIncest incestuous implications]]. [[spoiler:Subverted later in the film, as he eventually becomes a malignant presence in their lives when he drives Elvira away, kills Manny because he proposed to Gina, and locks Gina up in his own mansion out of an obsession with "protecting" her.]]

--> '''Tony Montana''': What you lookin' at? You all a bunch of fuckin' assholes. You know why? You don't have the guts to be what you wanna be. You need people like me. You need people like me so you can point your fuckin' fingers and say, "That's the bad guy." So... what that make you? Good? You're not good. You just know how to hide, how to lie. Me, I don't have that problem. Me, I always tell the truth. Even when I lie. So say good night to the bad guy! Come on. The last time you gonna see a bad guy like this again, let me tell you. Come on. Make way for the bad guy. There's a bad guy comin' through! Better get outta his way!
* ExactWords: Frank begs Tony not to kill him right before the latter takes control of his entire operation, and Tony tells Frank to relax, since he's not going to. Frank is so relieved that he's not going to die. Then we get the following gem.

* GoldDigger: Elvira only seems to be interested in men who are rich. Starting out as Frank's mistress, then later becoming Tony's wife after his newfound wealth.

* GoodTimesMontage: ''Push it to the limit! The limiiiiit!''

* IdiotBall: Deliberately ignoring Tony's warnings about getting it on with his sister was never going to end well for Manny. And by this point he was well aware that his friend had a hair-trigger temper that could go from zero to murder in the span of moments.

-->'''Tony''': You know what a Chazzer is, Frank? That's a pig that don't fly straight.
* ItsCuban: Tony becomes such a powerful and wealthy druglord that he can afford Cuban cigars.

* {{Malaproper}}: During his first meeting and initial negotiations with Sosa, Tony describes how smuggling coke over the waters of Panama is so much more risky because of Naval surveillance. He states that "it's no ''duckwalk'' anymore" (as opposed to ''"cakewalk"'').

* MsFanservice: Manny's girlfriend/hookup doesn't do much for the story but give the viewers [[MaleGaze a nice ass to look at]].

* NeverGoingBackToPrison: What motivates Tony into a new deal with Sosa, as Tony can't stomach jail anymore, not even a short three year stint.

* NoodleIncident: We never ''do'' learn how Tony got that scar... though given [[AxCrazy his nature]], there's many plausible scenarioes.

* OneWordTitle: As in [[Film/{{Scarface1932}} the original movie]], which in and of itself is based off another famous nickname for [[UsefulNotes/AlCapone a renowned gangster]]

* PoliticallyIncorrectVillain: According to Tony, he does not like working with Colombians. He also derisively refers to Italians as "Guineas" (which is funny considering Pacino himself is an Italian-American). In everyday life, he is a foulmouthed drug-dealing guy with increasing amounts of prick characteristics and was this close to officially being a wife beater in an argument at a restaurant.

* TheHeroDies: [[spoiler:Tony does indeed die at the end.]]

''Scarface'''s graphic violence and language drew controversy and was panned by most critics, but has since developed a cult following and become an influential popular work. It was especially influential on HipHop culture.

* VillainousBreakdown: [[spoiler:Tony]] in the last several minutes of the movie. [[spoiler:He is left alone in his office, coked out of his mind, being hit with the HeelRealization of killing his best friend Manny. Seeing Sosa's men on the security monitors, he tries to recover. He tries to gather his thoughts, muttering to himself "We gotta get organized", but there's no one to listen. He picks up a phone, but drops it without dialing as there's nobody to call. He needs someone he can trust to help him, but he's either driven away or killed everyone that fits that profile. He's all alone and about to die and almost only has himself to blame. The only thing that snaps him out of it is when Gina gets gunned down by said men, and even then it's only enough to make him decide [[RoaringRampageOfRevenge to kill as many of them as he can in blind fury and coke high.]]

* VillainousBreakdown: [[spoiler:Tony]] in the last several minutes of the movie. [[He is left alone in his office, coked out of his mind, being hit with the HeelRealization of killing his best friend Manny. Seeing Sosa's men on the security monitors, he tries to recover. He tries to gather his thoughts, muttering to himself "We gotta get organized", but there's no one to listen. He picks up a phone, but drops it without dialing as there's nobody to call. He needs someone he can trust to help him, but he's either driven away or killed everyone that fits that profile. He's all alone and about to die and almost only has himself to blame. The only thing that snaps him out of it is when Gina gets gunned down by said men, and even then it's only enough to make him decide [[RoaringRampageOfRevenge to kill as many of them as he can in blind fury and coke high]].]]

* VillainousBreakdown: In the last several minutes of the movie. [[spoiler:Tony is alone in his office, coked out of his mind, being hit with the HeelRealization of killing his best friend (''"What did I do? Oh Manny, what the fuck did I do?"''). He sees Sosa's men on the security monitors and tries to recover. ''"We gotta get organized,"'' he mumbles, trying to gather his thoughts, but there's no one to listen. He picks up a phone, but drops it without dialing; there's nobody to call. He needs someone he can trust to help him, but he's driven away or killed everyone that fits that profile. He's all alone and about to die and almost only has himself to blame. The only thing that snaps him out of it is when Gina gets gunned down by said men, and even then it's only enough to make him decide [[RoaringRampageOfRevenge to kill as many of them as he can in blind fury and coke high]].]]

** Frank Lopez’s warning to Tony about Sosa holds more water; when he mentions that Sosa would send a hit squad after him if the Bolivian crime lord didn't get his way, and that in general Sosa kills anyone who isn't 100% obedient to him. This was shown to be true after Sosa's fury with Tony [[spoiler: over the death of Alberto as he killed all of Tony's members and the crumbling drug lord himself in retaliation]].