Review: SCARFACE Blu-Ray
Fact: I didn't know until speaking with actor Steven Bauer recently that Scarface was mostly reviled until it started to gain cache with the hip hop set in the years following its release. It's a weird blank spot in my knowledge of film history that I did not know this: I'd always just assumed that the imminently quotable De Palma film (from a script by Oliver Stone) was always something of a grotesque darling of cineastes: the marriage of gangster picture, De Palma's taste for the red and gory, and the bombast of Oliver Stone. But then, when I consider it, this movie was made before being Oliver Stone was a big deal, and that De Palma had just come off of one flop (Blow Up), and if I really want to get more critical about the movie than I have been in the past, Scarface is all kinds of messed up in ways that had to be off-putting to viewers upon its initial release.
It's not simply the violence (hey, what good crime saga isn't), or the performances (although I suppose Pacino's Tony Montana might be 180 degrees or slightly less from his Michael Corleone), but I think it's some kind of weird syntheses of the materials in the story, in the direction, in the presentation of this sun-drenched and bloody Miami with this assemblage of broad, vicious Latino stereotypes, Scarface on the surface, might have created some negative impressions for viewers unprepared for it or--unlike myself--not inoculated against the assaultive experience of the film by years of subsequent violent fiction that has attempted to match or exceed De Palma's work here.
So it's all a matter of frame of reference, I guess. If I can be allowed a cliche (and I'll certainly permit myself this one for this movie, if you don't mind), Scarface was ahead of its time in as much as it inspired such passionate reaction and fandom among viewers and other filmmakers, that it would only be well-received once there was another wave of crime fiction (this time, via the bloody hip hop fantasies of the late 80's and early 90's, with the occasional, played-out shout-out to this day).
Maybe taken in a first viewing, coming at it without the benefit of the movies that have come after, Scarface isn't an easy movie to like. I don't know, I can only speak for my own experience--I love the twisted world concocted by De Palma and Stone, I love that its emotions are fairly simple, its morality silly (we're supposed to empathize with a coke dealer and frequent murderer only because he chooses the U.N. scene to get a conscience about who he kills), and I love that Pacino pretty much decides that he doesn't need to sound like any Cuban man that has ever lived (that wasn't impersonating Pacino pretending to be Cuban). For me, Scarface--warts and all--is part of the pulp canon and required viewing for anyone with even a passing interest in crime cinema.
Audio and Video
Scarface gets the 7.1 treatment in hi-def, and it looks and sounds better than it ever has for this viewer. Keep in mind, over the years I've seen the movie on full-screen television presentations and the letterboxed DVD set from earlier in the decade, so my point of reference isn't exactly the best. Still, the lurid colors of Tony Montana's Miami are eye-popping and the audio is cleanly mixed, so you can hear Pacino's foul-mouthed performance in all its glory.
Special Features
Scarface arrives on Blu-ray in a steelbook case, packed with 10 art cards and the special features below:
10 collectible art cards
Bonus disc of the original 1932 Scarface
Digital Copy of Scarface (1983) (expires 9/30/2012)
U-Control: Scarface Scoreboard
U-Control: Picture in Picture
The Scarface Phenomenon
The World of Tony Montana
Deleted Scenes
The Rebirth
The Acting
The Creating
The Making of Scarface: The Video Game
Scarface: The TV Version
Scarface at The Palms
BD-Live
My Scene
Pocket BLU
U-Hear
D-BOX
The copy of the '32 original is, of course, on a DVD, but hey, free movie, right? The inclusion of the many docs here amount to fans' and fellow filmmakers' admiration of Scarface, with many of them weighing in on the initial response from critics towards the film (negative, as noted above), and then its continued impact. With ample clips of the movie peppered throughout, you'll get the feeling that you've already re-watched the movie by the time they're over. I kind of wish that Universal could have made room for the "Scarface: The TV Version" on the disc. I know it's inclusion would likely amount to one long joke, but the two and a half minute snippets we see here convince me that it would be a funny joke.
Seriously, though, while it's nice to have the retrospective content here, commentary from De Palma or any of the other principal talent associated with the movie would have been very welcome. We get snippets of the director in the retrospective pieces (I think grabbed from the last DVD pressing, actually) but it's not exactly the comprehensive assessment from the filmmaker that we'd all like. As long as we're making wishlists of things we can't have, if De Palma was too busy to commit to a full commentary, something like the Alien-style roundtable-ish commentary (only some of the participants were in the booth together) to discuss certain scenes, etc. I feel like a pulp classic like Scarface deserves this kind of attention.
Grousing about what's not on the disc aside, you get a pretty decent spread from Universal, who've done a good job making the jump to Blu an attractive prospect for fans of the film.
Scarface is available on Blu-ray now.
