Great Characters: Tony Montana (“Scarface”)
When you think ‘larger than life’ movie characters, this guy has to be on the list:
Tony Montana as played by Al Pacino in the 1983 movie Scarface (screenplay by Oliver Stone). Here is an IMDB plot summary:
When Fidel Castro opens the harbor at Mariel, Cuba, he sends 125,000 Cuban refugees to reunite with their relatives in the United States. Among all the refugees, there is one who wants it all, his name is Tony Montana. Tony and his friend Manny when they arrive in the United States and start in small time jobs, soon they are hired by Omar Suarez to pay money to a group of Colombians. When the deal goes wrong, Tony and Manny leave with the money and succeed in their job. Soon Tony meets with drug kingpin Frank Lopez and falls for his boss’s girl Elvira. Pretty soon Tony will know that those who want it all, do not last forever and that is the price of power. The world will know Montana by one name….SCARFACE.
Tony is a bad guy, but not one without a compelling world view as this quote demonstrates:
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!
The movie has numerous compelling scenes, but the most iconic that will always be indelibly etched in our memories is this one:
Scarface is a rare American movie where the Protagonist is a ‘bad’ guy. And as with most Hollywood anti-heroes — for example, Bonnie & Clyde, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid — things generally don’t turn out too well. In Tony Montana’s case, it’s a negative metamorphosis as we watch him fall from the heights like Icarus who came to close to the sun only to plunge to his death, just like Tony does face-first in his pool, a floating corpse underneath a brass globe that reads, “The World Is Yours.”
Tony Montana: A great character.
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