65
Metascore
9 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- 100Chicago Sun-TimesRoger EbertChicago Sun-TimesRoger EbertScarface is one of those special movies, like "The Godfather," that is willing to take a flawed, evil man and allow him to be human.
- 100EmpireEmpirePerfomances are excellent, and despite its moralistic conclusion, the film has since become de rigueur viewing for crack barons, who know a good shoot-em-up when they see one.
- 100TV Guide MagazineTV Guide MagazineA beautiful, at times poetic exercise in excess from Brian De Palma.
- 90The New York TimesVincent CanbyThe New York TimesVincent CanbyScarface is the most stylish and provocative - and maybe the most vicious - serious film about the American underworld since Francis Ford Coppola's "Godfather."
- 80TimeRichard CorlissTimeRichard CorlissIt is a serious, often hilarious peek under the rock where nightmares strut in $800 suits and Armageddon lies around the next twist of treason.
- 80VarietyVarietyScarface is a grandiose modern morality play, excessive, broad and operatic at times.
- 63The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Jay ScottThe Globe and Mail (Toronto)Jay ScottScarface is a B- movie with singularly silly psychological pretensions: its neo-primitivism is to the complex moral cosmos of Francis Coppola's "Godfather" saga as Disney is to Dickens. [09 Dec 1983]
- 25Boston GlobeJay CarrBoston GlobeJay CarrIt plays like a crude "Godfather" parody, the sort that might amuse as a 10-minute sketch on "Saturday Night Live," but curdles and collapses as a 143-minute film. [09 Dec 1983]
- 20Chicago ReaderDave KehrChicago ReaderDave KehrBrian De Palma dedicates this 1983 feature to Howard Hawks and Ben Hecht, authors of the 1932 original, though I doubt they would find much honor in his gory inflation of their crisp, 90-minute comic nightmare into a klumbering, self-important, arrhythmic downer of nearly three hours.