Scarface

Al Pacino owned the 70s, diversified in the 80s and continues to be one of the most versatile character actors in movies today.

After being denied an Oscar for his outstanding performance in "The Godfather Part II", the man decided against sending a horses head to members of the academy and instead found himself collaborating with Brian De Palma ("The Untouchables") and an embittered young screenwriter by the name of Oliver Stone ("Platoon").

Pacino had already established himself as a great young actor willing to take risks with films "Dog Day Afternoon", "Serpico" and "Cruising".

Scarface, by comparison, was a low key reworking of the 1932 Howard Hawke's classic, an atypical gangster movie in terms of it's political statements about Castro's Cuba and the futility/hypocrisy of the drugs war (also explored in "Traffic").

Scarface is about a Cuban refugee who builds a powerful cocaine empire through a ruthless reign of ultra violence and business savvy. Tony Montana believes that "…first you get the money, then you get the power and then you get the woman…"

Pacino's partner in crime is an old friend from Havana called Manny Ray (the excellent Steven Bauer) together they fight their way out of a refugee camp, take out rival dealers and eventually whack the bosses to become the main men in downtown Miami... But hedonism and the pursuit of absolute power leads to paranoia and psychosis.

In the end, it all goes up in a hail of bullets and hellfire: Tony 'Scarface' Montana was a man so obsessed with the American dream, that he didn't realise it had consumed him in every way possible.