Scarface

An oft-repeated criticism of 'Scarface' is its portrayal of Cubans. Which is kind of laughable given the American government's attitude towards Cuba. I don't really think there's much American film-makers can do to compound the insult. Nonetheless, it's an easy criticism to understand. Opening with a news footage montage showing the boat people arriving in the US, title cards inform us that of the quarter of a million refugees who left Cuba in 1980, an estimated 25,000 had criminal records.

It's swiftly insinuated that Tony Montana (Al Pacino) counts for one of them. Detained, along with his friend Manny (Steven Bauer) at the ironically-named Freedomland (a refugee camp situated beneath an underpass), Tony embraces the American dream by undertaking a hit on a political dissident in return for a green card. Oh, and a job. If you can call sweating over a greasy stove in a burger van a job. Needless to say, Tony and Manny soon investigate career opportunities outside of the catering industry.

Omar Suarez (F. Murray Abraham), number two to paunchy mob boss Frank Lopez (Robert Loggia), gives them a taste of the criminal underworld - both its dangers (Tony is almost eviscerated by a chainsaw when his contact on his first job pulls a double-cross) and its rewards. One of the rewards is that a balding declasse middle-aged guy with a fake tan and a lot of bling gets the svelte, smart-mouthed and sexily contemptuous Elvira (Michelle Pfeiffer) on his arm. Tony decides he wants what Frank has. Particularly Elvira.

Tony strengthens his powerbase after Frank sends him and Omar to lay the groundwork for a deal with Bolivian drug lord Alejandro Sosa (Paul Shenar). Sosa recognises Omar as a stool pigeon and has him taken care of. Sensing he can trust Tony, Sosa makes the deal directly with him. This doesn't go over too well with Frank, who decides Tony's becoming a liability.

The key scene for me - and one of de Palma's trademark set-pieces - takes place in a nightclub. Plot points and narrative developments converge in such a cluster it's surprising one of the staff doesn't show them over to a table of their own. One near the stage. That way they could enjoy the cavortings of Octavio the Clown, though they'd have to scoot out the way PDQ as soon as the shoot-out starts. But I'm getting ahead of myself ...

Tony and Manny show up, the former not impressed to see his sister Gina (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio) enjoying a bit of the old bump and grind with some greasy lowlife, the latter not impressed that he's not the object of said bumping and grinding (Manny's hots for Tony's sister is something that has serious ramifications later on). When Gina's bit of rough leads her off to the toilets for a quick fumble and a line of coke (classy guy!), Tony sees red. His mood is already tense after a conversation with bent cop Mel Bernstein (Harris Yulin) who wants monthly payoffs from Tony and his holidays paid for. Then Frank and Elvira turn up, the latter unresponsive (as yet) to Tony's attentions and there's an altercation.

So we've had, in one ten minute scene, the Tony/Gina/Gina's boyfriend situation, the simmering Gina/Manny tension, the Tony/Bernstein issue, the unresolved Tony/Elvira tension, and the Tony/Frank stand-off. Throw into the mix the two gunmen waiting for the spotlight to drift away from Octavio's performance and light up Tony's table ...

De Palma's camera navigates the nightclub, and the intricacies of the scene, with effortless panache. In a film that has more than its share of set-pieces - the aforementioned business with the chainsaw, Tony's settling of the score with Frank, the abortive hit Tony undertakes at Sosa's behest, the 'Wild Bunch'-style shoot-out at Tony's mansion - this is a stand-out both technically and in terms of advancement of narrative. It's after Tony survives the ensuing gunplay that his ruthless ambition really drives him forward; ten minutes later, we're in montage territory, hundred dollar bills whizzing through a counting machine, Elvira on Tony's arm, vans pulling up in front of a bank and tough guys in sharp suits hauling bulking sacks of currency inside. All cut to Giorgio Morodor's pumped-up score.

And from here, 'Scarface' enters the downward curve of its narrative arc. If 'Little Caesar' is perhaps cinema's first rise-and-fall gangster epic (albeit shoehorned into 77 minutes), then 'Scarface' is one of its fullest expositions, the narrative arc charted across a properly epic running time of two and three quarter hours.

'Scarface' blew me away the first time I saw it, in my late teens. Everything about it was big: its length, the performances, the production design, the verbal outbursts (particularly Pacino's "take a look at the bad guy" rant in an upmarket restaurant) and the violence. I watched the video quite a few times in my twenties. I picked up the DVD as part of a Pacino box set recently and this afternoon is the first time I've seen it in maybe a decade. It's still a hell of movie, for all of the reasons mentioned. But it's an empty one. All surface: glossy and immediate and superficial. Which is kind of the point - the theme is moral bankrupcy, and de Palma achieves some 'Citizen Kane'-style images of his protagonist alone by his own actions in a mansion filled with very expensive but worthless things - but the bravura staging of the final massacre (with its all-together-now iconic line "say hello to my little friend") strives to make a martyr of Tony Montana. Unlike Henry Hill in 'Goodfellas', he doesn't get to live out the rest of his life like a shmuck - he gets to be the messiah of movie violence, instead, only defeated when someone shoots him in the back; the poster boy for everything de Palma and writer Oliver Stone were meant to be criticising.

"First you get the money, then you get the power," Tony declares soon after he and Manny get their start with Frank, opining that it's only after these two achievements that you get the women; "that's the way it works in this country." From the outset, Tony's vision of America is as a big fat dollar sign waiting for him to grab a chunk of it. The blimp he sees shortly after taking over Frank's operation - the message "THE WORLD IS YOURS" blinking out in huge letters - is at once his mission statement, his epitaph and the big lie he fell for.

A film criticised for its depiction of Cubans? As much as 'Scarface' can be said to be about anything, it's about how the American dream, no matter how villainous those who pursue it, is always the bigger bad guy.

From the mouths of babes

This from IMDb:

Screen siren Scarlett Johansson is eyeing a career switch as soon as she begins to wrinkle - she's preparing to become a director before movie bosses pass her up for another ingenue.

Johansson made her film debut at the age of nine in 1994's North, and already fears she'll be overlooked by the next budding beauty.

She tells America's Harper's Bazaar magazine, "It's hard to be a 24-year-old actor and not be typecast. A lot of roles are either for a sexy person or a Juno-type character.

"That ageism makes the actress fearful for her future, making her consider another path within the industry. There is some weird ageist quality in Hollywood, perhaps that's why I lean more toward directing and development.

"That's probably the direction I'll take; I can't keep up this face forever, you know."

Notwithstanding the fact that she’s only 24 (I’m 36, have yet to publish my first novel or direct anything beyond a shot-on-camcorder-edited-on-home-computer documentary about a local poetry society, but I’m nowhere near giving up hope), can I just add, for the defence, that an actress's best years are NOWHERE NEAR BEHIND HER AT EVEN TWICE THAT AGE.

Exhibit A: Diane Lane in ‘Unfaithful’ – age: 37; sex appeal: through the roof.

Exhibit B: Michelle Pfeiffer in ‘Stardust’ – age: 49; sex appeal: wowsers.

Exhibit C: Celia Imrie in ‘Calendar Girls’ – age: 51; sex appeal: the thinking man’s older woman.

Exhibit D: Helen Mirren in a random tabloid shot on some beach in a bikini – age: 63; sex appeal: timeless!

This post is dedicated to the natural beauty of older women everywhere. And to anyone who can’t see past their 20s … get a grip.

Stardust

I seem to recall the tag-line on the poster for 'Stardust' being something like "the fairytale that won't behave itself".

Good call.

The works of Neil Gaiman have never slotted neatly into categories, even when the genre touchstones seem to be present and correct. There are elements of horror, fantasy and mystery throughout his ouevre, but the only way you could accurately categorise Neil Gaiman is by coming up with a new genre - and you'd have to call it Neil Gaiman.

Maybe it's the enigmatic quality to his work, maybe it's because his imagination overarches the mainstream and goes heading off into new territories that are completely his own, but Gaiman adaptations are thin on the ground. In the 90s, he developed 'Neverwhere' for the BBC, then reimagined it as a novel. A couple of years ago, Gaiman's long-standing collaborator, the illustrator Dave McKean, made his directorial debut with the Gaiman-scripted 'MirrorMask', an offbeat, under-rated, often bizarre but ultimately beautiful film.

'Stardust', however, is Neil Gaiman's introduction to the mainstream: a decently budgeted adaptation, its cast balancing out newcomers (Charlie Cox, Kate Magowan) and flavours du jour (Sienna Miller, Ricky Gervais) with Hollywood heavyweights (Michelle Pfeiffer, Robert de Niro). If the cast is oddball, so is the director: Matthew Vaughn following up duties as producer to Guy Ritchie and his decidedly Ritchie-esque debut 'Layer Cake' with something that resolutely does not feature guns, gangsters, swearing and shell suits. The change of direction is quite pleasant.

The plot, in a nutshell, involves a quest by young idealist Tristan (Cox) to retrieve a fallen star, as a token of his love for Victoria (Miller), from an enchanted kingdom whose boundary borders his village. Also in pursuit of the star are a band of fratricidal princely brothers (their numbers including Jason Flemyng and Rupert Everett) hell-bent on killing each to secure their ascension to the throne, and narcissistic witch Lamia (Pfeiffer, at her best in ages) who wants to take the heart of the star for its powers of youthful reinvigoration.

Ah yes, the star itself. Upon falling from the heavens, it takes human form, that of Yvaine (Claire Danes), a young woman who vacillates between dreamy romanticism and acidic stroppiness. It's giving nothing away to say that Tristan finds her first and that romance eventually blossoms - it's what happens along the way that counts.

Despite a few contrivances and coincidences, 'Stardust' emerges as a fun, frothy concoction, its occasional moments of the macabre giving the production a bit of weight. It's not quite a masterpiece (maybe one day we'll get a Gaiman adaptation that truly captures the flavour of Gaiman's uncosseted imagination), but it's well worth your time, if for no other reason than de Niro's hilarious, flamboyant turn as a camp, cross-dressing sky pirate.