Critical Reception and Legacy (Scarface) Scarface

Critics split violently on release — some called it a masterpiece, others a disaster

Scarface opened on December 9, 1983 to one of the most polarized critical responses of the decade. The film's 170-minute runtime, nearly 200 uses of the word "fuck," and graphic violence — particularly the chainsaw sequence — made fence-sitting impossible.

"Scarface is one of those special movies, like The Godfather, that is willing to take a flawed, evil man and allow him to be human." — Roger Ebert, TCM (1983)

Roger Ebert awarded the film four out of four stars in the Chicago Sun-Times, praising Pacino's willingness to inhabit a character without softening him. Vincent Canby in the New York Times called it "a revelation." Richard Corliss wrote that "Pacino creates his freshest character in years." (tcm)

The negative reviews were equally emphatic.

"So much more a disaster than an outrage." — Andrew Sarris, TCM (1983)

David Denby dismissed it as "a sadly overblown B-movie." Pauline Kael, writing in The New Yorker, attacked both the direction and the lead performance: "After a while, Pacino is a lump at the center of the movie." She argued that De Palma had abandoned his signature visual gifts for a plodding conventional approach: "Just when De Palma needs every trick he can come up with, he gives up on 'style' and goes straight." Kael concluded that the film had "the length of an epic but not the texture of an epic." (scrapsfromtheloft)

The MPAA gave the film an X rating three times before De Palma won the appeal

The ratings battle nearly killed the film before it reached theaters. In October 1983, less than two months before the scheduled release, the MPAA rated Scarface X for "excessive and cumulative violence and for language." The X rating would have made the film commercially unreleasable — television and radio stations refused to run ads for X-rated films, and newspapers would not print their advertisements. (collider)

De Palma submitted four progressively edited cuts. The board rejected all of them. De Palma refused to make further changes, willing to be fired rather than compromise the film's integrity.

"We're gonna put the movie exactly the way I originally cut it... We beat the censor board." — Brian De Palma, Cinema Scholars (2023)

Universal president Robert Rehme declared the studio would not release the picture with an X rating and backed De Palma's appeal. Producer Martin Bregman assembled an appeal hearing that included the head of the Broward County Organized Crime Division (who spoke in favor of the film's realism), a letter of support from Roger Ebert read by critic Jay Cocks, and the head of a major theater chain who testified the film was acceptable as an R. MPAA president Jack Valenti presided over the appeal, which Bregman won 18-2. (collider, cbr)

De Palma then released the original uncut version anyway, reasoning that the changes were minor enough to be unnoticeable. He admitted this only months after the film's release.

The box office was modest but VHS turned Scarface into a phenomenon

The film grossed approximately $45 million domestically and $66 million worldwide against a budget variously reported as $25-37 million — a modest return during the 1983 holiday season. But Scarface became one of the first runaway hits of home video. The initial VHS release in summer 1984 — a two-tape set priced at $79.95 — was the first title to sell 100,000 copies at that price point. (wikipedia)

The 2003 twentieth-anniversary DVD sold more than two million units in its first week, making it the best-selling R-rated DVD release at the time. By 2020, total domestic disc sales (DVD and Blu-ray combined) exceeded 3.9 million units for over $84 million in revenue. (wikipedia)

Hip-hop adopted Scarface in the early 1990s and transformed it from flop to foundational text

The film's resurrection is inseparable from hip-hop culture. In the early 1990s, as VHS copies circulated through urban communities, rappers began quoting Tony Montana's dialogue, sampling Giorgio Moroder's score, and modeling personas on the character's rags-to-riches trajectory. The connection was not ironic — artists from marginalized communities recognized Tony's immigrant hustle, his refusal to accept his assigned station, and his spectacular self-destruction as a mirror of their own experiences.

"Hip-hop just got it. They understood it. They embraced it, the rappers." — Al Pacino, Billboard (2024)

"Scarface was dead and buried until hip-hop rediscovered it. In the early 90s I would start getting recognized on the street by rappers." — Steven Bauer, CrimeReads (2023)

Jay-Z's debut album Reasonable Doubt opens with a scene recreation featuring dialogue from F. Murray Abraham's drug deal. Nas's Illmatic includes explicit homages. The Notorious B.I.G. sampled Frank Lopez's advice: "Never get high on your own supply." The Wu-Tang Clan's Raekwon has described Scarface as "the bible of hip hop." A Houston rapper took "Scarface" as his stage name entirely. (crimereads, collider)

"Tony Montana and Scarface are a foundational influence for hip-hop." — Bill Stephney, CrimeReads (2023)

"And then the next thing you know, VHS is going out and more people are seeing it. Plus, we're on the records, these rappers. And then it just carried and it kept going and going." — Al Pacino, Billboard (2024)

The critical reassessment reversed the 1983 verdict almost completely

By the 2000s, the consensus had shifted dramatically. The film is now widely regarded as one of the defining entries in the crime genre and one of the most successful remakes in Hollywood history. It has been referenced in television (The Simpsons, Breaking Bad), spawned a licensed video game (2006), generated graphic novels, and produced a merchandise industry built around Tony Montana's image. (emanuellevy)

The elements critics attacked in 1983 — the excess, the operatic volume, the refusal to modulate — are now read as features rather than flaws. The film's maximalism, which Kael found exhausting, is what made it legible to hip-hop and to audiences who saw Tony Montana not as a cautionary tale but as a truth about the cost of ambition.

"There is this unabashedly, unapologetic character in Tony that was... the ultimate underdog... it's the American Dream. There's an archetypal reason for it resonating, particularly with disenfranchised groups." — Kevin Goetz, CrimeReads (2023)