FILM REVIEW OF ''LIVE BY NIGHT" (2017)

Two-time Oscar-winning writer & director Ben Affleck of “Good Will Hunting” and “Argo” has helmed an above-average, old-fashioned, Prohibition Era gangster epic “Live by Night” (***1/2 OUT OF ****) with himself as star that bears greater resemblance to Sergio Leone’s “Once Upon a Time in America” (1984) with Robert De Niro than Francis Ford Coppola’s “The Godfather” (1972) with Marlon Brando.  At the same time, Affleck has tampered with the violent, empire-building gangster film formula.  Mind you, “Live by Night” isn’t strictly traditional in its depiction of gangsters.  Instead of machine gun massacres in the urban canyons of a northern metropolis, “Live by Night” stages machine gun massacres at luxury resort hotels amid the scenic splendor of rural southern Florida.  Like the antihero that Affleck portrays with considerable style, charm, and restraint, “Live by Night” doesn’t abide by all gangster movie rules, particularly the tragic ending.  Nevertheless, crime still doesn’t pay for the protagonist.  As in most gangster movies, the mobsters count on avarice, treachery, blackmail, and betrayal to achieve their infamy.  Affleck’s armed and dangerous anti-hero, however, displays neither the aggressive pugnacity of Edward G. Robinson in “Little Caesar” (1931) nor does he behave like James Cagney’s trigger-happy hoodlum in “The Public Enemy” (1931.)  Instead, he imitates Robert De Niro’s Jewish gangster David 'Noodles' Aaronson in the Leone masterpiece.  Affleck’s Irish-American hooligan Joe Coughlin knows when to say ‘no’ and abandon the business before his rivals riddle him with bullets to kingdom come.  My only complaint—and it constitutes more of a quibble—is the 2 hours plus running time. This chronicle about a self-proclaimed ‘outlaw’ who ascends from the ranks of blue-collar, unaffiliated thieves and emerges as the white-collar chieftain of a mob-supervised, multi-million-dollar enterprise doesn’t exactly lunge off the screen.  Affleck allows things to develop gradually and steeps the logistics of crime in atmosphere galore as well as memorable characters.  Strong villains make the best movies with their notorious skullduggery.  Faithfully adapting the second novel in Dennis Lahane’s Coughlin series, Affleck tangles with three unforgettable dastards. 

The son of an incorruptible Boston Police Deputy Superintendent, Joe Coughlin (Ben Affleck of “The Town”) refuses to accommodate his father, Thomas Coughlin (Brendan Gleeson of “Gangs of New York”), when it comes to being a law-abiding citizen.  Joe survived the devastating trench warfare of World War I in France as a U.S. Marine while men around him perished by the dozens on the battlefield.  He has come home to Boston with nothing but utter contempt for the politicians who sold out the troops at the international treaty negotiation.  Joe vows never to take orders again.  Things don’t pan out exactly as our hero had anticipated.  Initially, Joe and two masked accomplices knock over an illegal, high-stakes poker game with a paid-off insider, Emma Gould (Sienna Miller of “American Sniper”), who knows her way around Boston.  Eventually, one of Boston’s most notorious gangsters, Albert White (Robert Glenister of “Safe Conduct”), learns that Joe has been raiding his venues.  White insists that our protagonist join his gang and use his skills for something more appropriate to his talents.  Meanwhile, unbeknownst to the jealous White, Joe has been sneaking around behind White’s back with his mistress Emma.  Mafia crime boss Maso Pescatore (Remo Girone of “Angel with a Gun”) summons Joe and asks him to kill White.  Adamantly, Joe refuses to attach himself to the Italians.  Maso threatens to inform on Joe if he doesn’t eliminate White. 

Meantime, Joe plans a big bank robbery so Emma and he can flee to California with some capital. The robbery goes sideways.  Three policemen die trying to nab Joe and his accomplices.  Eventually, White catches up with Joe after Emma betrays him.  White brutally beats Joe up.  He is poised to finish him off when Thomas Coughlin rolls up with the Boston Police in tow.  Thomas arrests Joe, but he convinces a harsh judge prosecute his son on lesser charges since Joe’s accomplices killed the cops.  Furthermore, Thomas informs Joe that Emma died when her getaway car plunged into the river.  Joe sweats out forty months behind bars in the Charlestown State Prison.  After his release, Joe offers to work for the Pescatore family, and Maso dispatches him to Ybor City, Tampa, Florida, to handle their rum-running enterprise.  No sooner has Joe set up shop than the evil White dispatches not only his own henchmen but also hooded KKK gunmen to make life miserable for our hero.  Joe creates an enormously profitable operation for Maso.  Nevertheless, he doesn’t abandon his yearning to wreck vengeance on White for what he did not only to him but also Emma.

“Foxcatcher” production designer Jess Gonchor, “Tree of Life” costume designer Jacqueline West, and “Forrest Gump” set decorator Nancy Haigh has painstakingly recreated both the glory and the squalor of the Prohibition Era.  The gangsters attire themselves lavishly in posh suits with fedora-style hats, while their dames doll themselves up with equal magnificence.  The gangsters cruise around in vintage cars of the period, and their henchmen wield that indispensable weapon of the day: the .45-caliber, Thompson submachine gun with drum magazines rather than stick magazines.  Indeed, Affleck has preserved virtually all the elements of the classic gangster movie during the Depression about illegal rum-runners.  After fate cheats Joe with Emma’s sudden death, he gets involved romantically with a gorgeous Cuban lady, Graciela Suarez (Zoe Saldana of “Star Trek Beyond”), who participates in the business of selling illegal rum with her brother.  “Live by Night” doesn’t dwell only on the gangsters and their illicit business, but also in the lives of the supporting characters, particularly a young woman (Elle Fanning) who suffered from the adversity of heroin addiction and later becomes an evangelist to protest vice of any kind.  The cast is superb, and nobody gives a bad performance.  Despite its leisurely, slow-burn pace, “Live by Night” manages to present the exploits of gangsters in a setting and manner that few gangster movies have, especially with its lukewarm finale.

FILM REVIEW OF ''IDENTITY THIEF" (2013)

 

Jason Bateman contended with social media as a concerned father in the dramatic movie “Disconnect” where he discovered that his misfit son tried to commit suicide as a result of pictures that his teenaged son had posted on the Internet.  Now, Bateman plays another father in “Horrible Bosses” director Seth Gordon’s improbably but entertaining fish-out-of-water comedy “Identity Thief” with Melissa McCarthy.  Bateman is cast as father who loses his identity to a clever con artist over the telephone.  McCarthy plays the eponymous character with gusto.  “Scary Movie 3” scenarist Craig Mazin and Gordon have a field day pitting straight-laced Bateman against the comical McCarthy and humiliating him at every turn.  Eventually, these two emerge as an odd couple.  The ways they change during the course of the movie make “Identity Thief” (*** OUT OF ****) an engaging laffer.  You’ve got to love comedy, tolerate profanity, and resign yourself to sexually offensive situations to be able to laugh off what transpires.  While McCarthy hams it up as the cunning Diana, Bateman delivers a flawless, deadpan performance as a well-meaning milquetoast.  Morris Chestnut, Jon Favreau, John Cho, Robert Patrick, Eric Stonestreet, and Jonathan Banks contribute strong supporting performances.
 

This madcap comedy of errors finds our clueless, chumpster hero leaving his pregnant wife (Amanda Peet of "Sax and Violins") and two daughters in comfortable Denver, Colorado, to cruise south to Winter Park, Florida, where he hopes to persuade a gluttonous identity thief, Diana (Melissa McCarthy), to accompany him back to the City of the Plains.  Early in "Identity Thief," Sandy Bigelow Patterson (Jason Bateman of “Smokin' Aces") answers the phone at work and makes the fatal mistake of divulging his full name, birthday, and social security number to the eponymous villainess who is posing as a computer security associate.  She embarks on a spending rampage and gets so plastered at a bar that the police take her to jail on a DUI. Naturally, she misses her court date.  Not surprisingly, the Winter Park police contact the Denver Police and they pull Sandy over and take him into custody.  Eventually, Sandy convinces Detective Reilly of the Denver Police that he is not the same person as the scam artist in Winter Park.  Reilly points that it may take between six months and a year for him to clear up his identity thief crisis.  Now, Sandy is in trouble with his boss, Daniel Casey (John Cho of "Star Trek") because of his huge credit card debt.  No sooner does our upright family guy protagonist track down his identity thief than he winds up helping her flee from two, gun-toting, Hispanic narcotics dealers.  Diana conspired with Marisol (Genesis Rodriguez of "Man on a Ledge") and Julian (Clifford Joseph Harris Jr. of “The Hangover”) to forge credit cards for them and their crime boss.  During their escape, Patterson claps handcuffs on her a la “The 39 Steps,” but Diana extracts herself without difficulty from the cuffs.  These two wind up helping each other while the villains head off in hot pursuit.  

Gordon and Mazin raise the ante with various plot complications during the road trip.  A notorious, big-time mobster behind bars, Paul (Jonathan Banks of “Beverly Hills Cop”) who is linked to Diana dispatches a hell-bent-for-leather hit man, Skiptracer (Robert Patrick of “Terminator 2”), to eliminate Diana.  After Skiptracer abducts Diana, Sandy manages to run them off the road and Skiptracer’s van overturns during the collision.  Moments after Sandy gets Diana out of the van, a semi-truck demolishes Sandy’s car so they appropriate Skiptracer’s van.  The van overheats on them, and Sandy and Diana find themselves on foot.  They wind up lost in the woods and camp out until first light.  While Sandy tries to sleep, a snake slithers up one pants-leg.  The snake scene in the woods will keep you laughing, even if the snake is CGI.  Watching Diana trying to drive the serpent off with a flame stick is amusing, too.  However, things turn truly zany when the snake bites Sandy on the neck! Diana’s favorite move is to smash her adversary’s throat with her fist.

The chief problem with “Identity Thief” is its messy morality. Our protagonist tells his daughter at the outset of the action that bad behavior is punished, but he engages in such antics.  Meanwhile, as much as our heroine tries to change her stripes, Diana never entirely renounces her amoral ways.  At least one plot line involving Jonathan Banks’ incarnated criminal is never taken advantage of and the fates of three villains sent to kill McCarthy are left unraveled. McCarthy’s riotous shenanigans and Bateman’s straight-arrow businessman and the charisma that they generate salvage this otherwise formulaic saga.

 

FILM REVIEW OF ''PARKER" (2013)

The brawny Jason Statham crime thriller “Parker”(*** OUT OF ****) qualifies as uneven but entertaining.  Too many characters converge in this above-average revenge melodrama.  Hispanic diva Jennifer Lopez plays one of those extraneous characters in “Black Swan” scenarist John J. McLaughlin’s flawed screenplay.  Cast as a divorced, debt-ridden, real estate agent, Lopez never gets intimate with her rugged “Transporter” star.  Instead, she is stuck in a supporting role and lends only minimal sizzle to “Blood In, Blood Out” director Taylor Hackford’s otherwise high-octane actioneer.  In one scene, she strips to her undies for our suspicious protagonist to see if she is wearing a wire.  Meantime, our hero has somebody else, in an even smaller role, who attends to him after he’s been shot, stabbed and beaten up.  Nevertheless, when Lopez isn’t chauffeuring Statham around scenic Palm Beach, Florida, she is meddling with his carefully laid plans the same way Lucille Ball used to interfere with his Cuban band-leader husband’s nightclub show in the “I Love Lucy” television comedy.  This energetic R-rated epic follows the exploits of a tough-as-nails professional criminal named Parker who lives by a strict code of ethics that reflects his principles.  He doesn’t harm anybody who doesn’t ask for it, but robbery is still his bread and butter.  When an armed guard nearly succumbs to a heart attack, Parker calms him down while he steals from him.

Statham isn’t the first actor to incarnate Parker.  If you’re counting, “Parker” marks the sixth time Hollywood has adapted the late Donald E. Westlake’s crime novel that he penned under the pseudonym Richard Stark.  Initially, French New Wave director Jean-Luc Godard changed the sex of the role for actress Anna Karina who played Paula in “Made in USA” in 1966.  Lee Marvin took a bullet as the same character with the name Walker in director John Boorman’s violent shoot’em up saga “Point Blank” in 1967.  Jim Brown played him as McClain in director Gordon Flemyng’s account of a hardboiled hold-up in “The Split” in 1968.  Robert Duvall landed the role as Macklin in director John Flynn’s “The Outfit” in 1973.  Finally, Mel Gibson appropriated the part as Porter in director Brian Helgeland’s gritty, bullet-riddled “Payback” (1999).  If you haven’t seen these previous adaptations hardboiled melodramas, you should put them on your wish list.  

“Parker” opens with an explosive heist at the Ohio State Fair.  Parker (Jason Statham of “Safe”) supervises an elaborate heist with four partners with whom he has no history.  This quartet masquerades as either clowns or cops, while he dons the collar of a clergyman.  They plunder the concession booth and make off with hundreds of thousands of dollars.  A case of arson designed to distract the authorities so the gang can make a quiet getaway concludes with the tragic death of an innocent bystander.  No sooner has this criminal quintet fled with their ill-gotten gains than Melander (Michael Chiklis of “The Fantastic Four”) insists Parker chip in his share of the loot so they can finance a $50-million haul in Palm Beach, Florida.  Naturally, since our hero doesn’t trust his accomplices, he refuses to join them.  Melander pulls a gun on Parker, and they careen recklessly down a public highway trying to control Parker.  Parker beats them up and then bails out the window.  He slams into the asphalt and lays there stunned.  August (Micah A. Hauptman of “S.W.A.T.: Firefight”) shoots him once and disposes of his bloody corpse into a ditch.  Miraculously, Parker survives this near-death ordeal and lucks up when a family stops to help him out.  Our hero awakens in a hospital as the police are making inquiries about him.  Cleverly, he manages to elude them despite both  the trauma and his gunshot wound.  He tracks Melander and his trigger-happy goons down to sunny Palm Beach, Florida.  Parker’s escape from the hospital and his improvised methods for boosting cars and getting cash-on-the-run are fascinating stuff.  Not long after Parker arrives in Florida, he hooks up with Lesley (Jennifer Lopez of “Enough”) and uses her to find where his ex-partners are holed up in an elite population.  “Parker” loses momentum at this juncture before it recovers with a suspense confrontation between our amoral hero and the dastardly quartet of hoods.  

Despite the alluring attraction she provides, Jennifer Lopez could have been deleted entirely from "Parker."  After all, what is the point of having a looker like Lopez if she is not the hero’s romantic interest?  Meantime, Hackford and McLaughlin confine Parker’s girlfriend Claire (Emma Booth) to the periphery with little to do aside from fleeing from his assailants and nursing our hero’s wounds.  She doesn’t have enough time to make much of an impression.  Michael Chiklis, Clifton Collins Jr., Wendell Pierce, and Micah A. Hauptman are thoroughly convincingly as ruthless criminals who leave Statham for dead on a road with a bullet in him.  Unfortunately, we don’t learn much about these thugs since Hackford and McLaughlin concentrate on the plight of Lopez’ hard luck character.  Looking way past his prime as Statham’s mentor, Nick Nolte spends most of his time growling his lines of dialogue as if he were recovering from a hangover.  One of the best close quarter’s combat scenes pits Statham against Swiss actor Daniel Bernhardt, who replaced Jean-Claude Van Damme in the “Bloodsport” franchise.  For the record, Statham and Bernhardt performed their own stunts in a knock-down, drag-out, brawl.  This bruising man-to-man knife and fistfight qualifies as one of the highlights of “Parker.”  Clocking in at just shy of two hours, “Parker” could have been leaner and meaner had either Lopez’s scenes been trimmed or the two women had been merged into one.  Nevertheless, die-hard Statham fans will enjoy the white-knuckled shenanigans in this muscular melodrama. 

FILM REVIEW OF "SCARFACE" (1983)

Brian De Palma's contribution to modern crime movies, "Scarface" (**** out of ****), amounts to a splendid but extended remake of the 1932, black & white, Howard Hawks classic that starred Paul Muni and George Raft. In this lavish remake, Al Pacino of "The Godfather" trilogy plays the eponymous criminal as a Cuban refugee. He entered America by sea when Castro emptied his jails and asylums in May 1980 as part of the infamous Mariel boatlift. Some 125-thousand refugees fled Cuba, and about 25-thousand had criminal records. This extremely profane but engrossing drama depicts how the protagonist made it to the zenith of the crime world. When Universal Pictures produced this movie in 1983, they had no idea about either the controversy that would erupt during the south Florida lensing or the ultimate cult status that this corrosive, anti-narcotics, tragedy would generate, particularly with African-Americans. Eventually, the film aroused so much ill feeling that Universal had to complete the shooting in California. De Palma and scenarist Oliver Stone took one of the three greatest crime movies of the early 20th century and changed it more than either Hawks or his own scenarist Ben Hecht might have imagined. The original "Scarface" clocked in at a lean 94 minutes, while the "Scarface" remake stretches out to an indulgent 170 minutes. Nevertheless, DePalma and Stone have exploited a historical event to make their gangsters reminiscent of the immigrant gangsters during the era of the first "Scarface" movie. Indeed, at one point, Tony Montana explains to customs officials that he learned English because his American father took him to see Humphrey Bogart and James Cagney movies. He tells them that he worked in construction in Cuba, but they don't believe him and the pitchfork tattoo on Tony's hand makes him suspicious of him. They think that the tattoo is an assassin's tattoo. Considering that the film runs just shy of three hours, the filmmakers do a good job of balancing the violent empire building scenes with Tony's domestic life with his mother, sister, and later his wife. "Midnight Express" composer Giorgio Moroder's disco soundtrack ranks as one of the classics. Moroder does a superb job with the night club scenes and his moody music in the dramatic scenes is just as good. Lenser John A. Alonzo's widescreen color photography is elegant and his cameras have a way of roaming through a scene, especially before the shoot-out in the Babylon Club. DePalma likes to cross cut between different scenes, such as at the Babylon Club where Tony is about to be shot at to the interior of the car with his young sister Gina and his partner Manny as they drive away and discuss her brother. The best filmmakers cross-cut between scenes so as to break up the action, relieve boredom and deliver the plot piecemeal with the fewest complications.

Our underdog protagonist rises from the streets literally after he performs a murder at Freedomtown. Immigration officials have confined all the Cuban refugees, including Tony and his compadres, to a fenced in enclosure under a Florida freeway. Manny finds a way of out Freedomtown. Our protagonist kills a former confidante of Castro, Emilio Rebenga (Roberto Contreras of "Black Samurai"), for Miami drug dealer Frank Lopez (Robert Loggia of "Prizzi's Honor") because Rebenga tortured his brother in a Cuba prison. Tony and his compadres orchestrate the murder as a part of a riot on August 11, 1980, and they stalk Rebenga chanting the word "Libertad!" As a result of this murder, Lopez provides Tony Montana and his closest pal Manny (Steven Bauer of "Raising Cain") as well as some others with green cards. They start out as lowly dishwashers at a food stand called the El Paraiso. Nevertheless, it doesn't take them long to put on their suits and ties and then they never look back. Indeed, Lopez henchman Omar Suarez (F. Murray Abraham of "Amadeus") offers Tony and Manny $500 to unload a marijuana boat. Tony thinks the deal stinks because he has heard that the going price for unloading a boat was $1000. Omar winds up offering them a bigger paycheck. If they can pick up two keys of cocaine from a gang of Colombians arriving in Miami on Friday, Tony and Manny stand to earn $5000. Tony and Manny along with a couple of their Cuban buddies cruise over to the Sun Ray Motel and life is never the same after Tony enters the room. Everything looks okay. A man and a woman occupy the room and the movie "Earthquake" (1974) is playing on the television. The Colombian chieftain, Hector (Al Israel of "The Soldier"), tries to play a cat and mouse game with Tony. Things change drastically when Hector demands to know the whereabouts of Tony's money. Actually, Tony stashed the dough in the trunk of their convertible outside on the street with Manny and company. The Colombians seize Tony's back-up man Angel Fernandez (Pepe Serna of "American Me")at the door when Manny isn't watching, and Hector cuts him up with the chainsaw. Eventually, Manny shoots his way into the motel room with a machine gun in his fists blasting away at everybody in sight. He takes out the woman Marta (one-time only actress Barbra Perez), stitching her across the chest with flying lead. During the shoot-out, one of the Colombians that Manny thought that he had killed shoots him in the right side. The evil Hector who wielded the chainsaw flees in terror, but Tony chases him down in the middle of the street. In front of everybody, Tony perforates Hector's forehead with a bullet. Not only does Tony bring Lopez the coke but also the money.

Lopez takes an immediate liking to Tony. "Hey, I need a guy with steel in his balls. A guy like you. And I need him around me all the time," Lopez says. Meanwhile, Tony sets his sights on Lopez's slinky but gorgeous squeeze, Elvira Hancock (Michelle Pfeiffer of "The Hollywood Knights"), but she seems more intent on snorting cocaine. Incidentally, Tony learns her last name on the dance floor and that she hails from Baltimore, Maryland. Anyway, Lopez assures Tony that if he flies straight with him that he will enjoy a long, happy life. He tells him that the biggest problem that Tony will face is what to do with all the stinking money. Lopez's words ring true but at a grim price.

Lopez sends Omar and Tony to Cochoabamba, Bolivia, to talk with a major druglord Alejandro Sosa (Paul Shenar of "The End of August") about cocaine. During their negotiations, Sosa smells a rat and has Omar taken up in a helicopter and thrown out with a noose around his throat. According to Sosa, Omar had served as a police informant several years ago and his information about Vito Duval and the Ramos Brothers--Nello and Gino--netted them both life sentences. Tony watches as Omar wiggles at the end of the rope. Predictably, Lopez is furious when Tony comes back with Omar and has a deal of a lifetime for Lopez that the crime kingpin cannot afford to buy. Tony assures Lopez that he can make up any difference in the lack of money by going out and hitting the streets. When Lopez argues that the Diaz brothers won't take kindly to Tony's ambitious movie, Tony erupts in a rage at Lopez. He is prepared to kill anybody that gets in his way. "Remember I told youwhen you started, the guys who last in this business are the guys who fly straight, low-key, quiet," Lopez reminds Tony. "And the guys who who want it all--chicas, champagne, flash--they don't last." Lopez is all but telegraphing his next move.

Meantime, Tony makes two new discoveries that heighten the tension in his life. He enters the Bablyon Club and spots his younger sister Gina (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio of "The Perfect Storm")dancing with a thug. Tony goes ballistic with controlled rage and Moroder's music reflects this attitude change on the soundtrack. No sooner has Tony seen this than he finds himself talking to a cop. The cop mentions the Rebenga killing and the slaughter at the Sun Ray Motel to get Tony's attention. Corrupt detective MeL Bernstein (Harris Yulin of "Doc")informs Tony that Thony is no longer a small-time punk. "You're public property now. Supreme Court says your privacy can be invaded." Mel makes Tony a steep monthly offer. The offer includes the cops letting Tony know who is moving against him and shaking down anybody that Tony wants shaken done." Not-surprisingly, Lopez puts a contract out on Tony and two killers try to mow him down at the Babylon Club. Tony and his men kill both Lopez and Tony takes Elvira as his wife. He buys an estate, sets up a real estate business, and lives large, installing a 24-hour security monitoring system at his home. Ironically, Tony's affection for children bring him down along with his ferocious coke habit. When the cartel finds itself in the spotlight because of an anti-narcotic activist, Sosa appeals to Tony to help them. Tony is facing a stretch in prison, but Sosa assures him that he will come out clean if he helps his non-English speaking killer, Alberto (Mark Margolis of "Eddie Macon's Run"), murder the activist with a car bomb. Tony betrays Sosa and kills Alberto when the man tries to blow up the activist's car with the man's wife and two children. As tough as Tony is, he lacks the stomach to kill innocent bystanders, perhaps his only redeeming factor and what sets him apart from his criminal conspirators. Predictably, Sosa strikes back with a gang of gunmen who descend on Tony's estate, slashing, gashing, shooting, and killing without a qualm. They hit Tony's place like Indians on a night raid. Ironically, none of the surveillance cameras are useful for our protagonist, though they keep up posted on where the villains are.

Tony has other problems by now. He cannot find Manny and his mother, Mama Montana (Miriam Colon of "One-Eyed Jacks"), has been calling ever since Tony left for New York City about Gina. Gina has vanished but Mama Montana knows where she is; she followed Gina to a palatial estate at 409 Citrus Drive. If Tony were not keyed up enough after the debacle in the Big Apple with Alberto, his brotherly rage asserts itself and he heads to the estate. Manny appears at the door and Gina looks down at her new husband and her brother from a balcony, but it is too late. Tony's rage explodes and he shoots Manny twice before he learns from Gina that they have been married and wanted to surprise Tony. Talk about a surprise that shatters somebody's life, Tony realizes what he has done and his staggered by killing his oldest friend. When his bodyguards drive Gina and he back to the house, Tony looks terrible.

The themes of trust, greed, betrayal and cocaine abuse permeate Oliver Stone's elaborate screenplay and he has written some memorable lines of dialogue. "Nothing exceeds like excess," Elvira observes as she snorts some coke. Stone, who later became a notable film director himself with "Platoon" and "JFK," wrote "Scarface" after he wrote "Conan the Barbarian" for director John Milius and before he wrote "Year of the Dragon" for director Michael Cimino. If you watch "Scarface" enough, you'll notice that the film contains a wealth of irony. The scene at Lopez Motors when Lopez begs Tony not to kill him is a perfect example. Tony doesn't kill Lopez, he has Manny knock him off. The film is not without its moments of humor--few and far between--as when Manny tries his tongue action on a bikini-clad Caucasian female. At one point, Tony puts on a woman's hat to make Elvira laugh at him. The performances are all excellent, especially Loggia. De Palma and Stone carefully groom their protagonist Tony Montana who seems like an okay but abrasive guy until he shows a genuinely nasty side of his personality that involves being a little more than protective of his younger sister Gina. Tony doesn't want anybody to lay a hand on his sister. Squeamish people should probably avoid this trigger-happy, shoot'em up saga, especially the rather gruesome chainsaw scene in the bathroom of a motel with the Colombian drug smugglers.The finale at the Scarface residence is terrific!