Tony Montana
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Antonio "Tony" Montana is the main character in Brian DePalma's 1983 movie Scarface (a remake of the 1932 Scarface) played by Al Pacino.
"In the spring of 1980 the port at Mariel Harbor was opened, and thousands set sail for the United States. They came in search of the American Dream. One of them found it on the sun washed avenues of Miami... wealth, power and passion beyond his wildest dreams. He was Tony Montana, but the world will remember him by another name... Scarface".
Tony Montana was a Cuban refugee arriving on the Mariel boatlift after five years in prison. He quickly entered a life of crime. He quickly rose to the top of Miami's criminal underworld, feared for his willingness to kill anyone who got in his way, except women and children. During his time on top, Montana was addicted to cocaine, which set the stage for an equally meteoric fall.
Montana became a powerful drug lord after violently eliminating all of his competition, including his one-time mentor, Frank Lopez (Robert Loggia). Montana then promptly married Elvira Hancock (Michelle Pfeiffer), Lopez's girlfriend. The marriage was rocky, marked by vicious, drug-fueled arguments, and Montana's new wife grew to despise him.
In his rush to have it all, Montana failed to acquire Lopez's experience and business acumen, and soon after he was facing criminal charges for tax evasion and money laundering. Determined to not to spend any time in prison, Montana sought the aid of Bolivian drug lord Alejandro Sosa (Paul Shenar), with whom he had done business before. But Sosa demanded a heavy price: he wanted Montana to assassinate a political enemy; during the attempted hit it became apparent that the only way to kill him was to also kill the man's wife and children. In a rare moment of conscience, Montana refused to carry out the contract and killed the assassin, who had planted a bomb beneath the subject's car, just as he was about to activate the detonator. Outraged, Sosa vowed to destroy him.
The person Montana cared the most for was his sister, Gina (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio). He was fiercely overprotective of her, forbidding her to date any men and brutalizing potential boyfriends (It is implied that he harbored repressed incestuous feelings for her.) She began dating his best friend and business partner, Manny Ribera (Steven Bauer), in secret, terrified of what her brother would do to them if he found out. The couple eventually married, thinking that joining together respectably would win Montana's approval; when Montana found them together, however, he flew into a rage and killed Manny, without knowing about the wedding.
The very same night, Sosa's henchmen invaded Montana's house and opened fire on him, killing Gina. In a desperate act of defiance, Montana grabbed an M16 with a M203 Launcher Attachement and blew up the door, killing four of the men. He then went to the top of his balcony and opened fire on his would-be assassins, killing many of them. He remained standing through much of the barrage, even as he sustained multiple, serious gunshot wounds. He finally went down when a lone gunman shot him point-blank from behind with a shotgun. In a piece of irony, the globe that reads, "The World is Yours" rests behind his bloodied body as he floats in the pool.
[edit] Cultural influence
Since the release of Scarface, the Tony Montana character has been widely referenced and parodied in American popular culture. In the world of hip hop, particularly gangsta rap, Montana is widely seen as a role model for his "outsider" status, rise from poverty to wealth and power, and sociopathic appetite for violence.
Many Latino and Hispanic rappers dress like characters from the film, though they only opt to emulate the "street clothes" Tony's crew wears in the beginning of the movie, neglecting the flashy suits which he wears for the majority of the film. It has also become very popular to embroider or emboss images of Tony onto leather jackets and pants.
Each DVD release inspired the largely Hispanic population in Hudson County, NJ to "camp out" in front of retail stores such as Best Buy in Secaucus, as well as Circuit City in Union City. Both stores indicated record high sales on the release dates.
Lines from the film are also frequently sampled on hip-hop songs. The Houston-based Geto Boys were one of the earliest rap groups to sample the lines and dialogue. During Public Enemy's "Welcome to the Terrordome," Flavor Flav recites several lines from the film. Music from the movie has also been sampled in the instrumentals for hip-hop songs such as Mobb Deep's "G.O.D. Pt. III" and "It's Mine". Nas recorded a song "The World is Yours" based on the motto Montana lived by. One hip-hop artist - Brad Jordan (later a member of the Geto Boys) has even gone so far as to name himself Scarface after the film, and another goes by the name Tony Montana. A Houston-area art car artist is known to wear flashy pimp suits modeled after the ones seen in the film. Various Latin rap artists such as Fat Joe, Big Pun, Cuban Link and The Beatnuts sample famous lines from the movie Scarface and pay regular homage to Montana. Tony Yayo of G-Unit fame has stated publicly this is the inspiration for his name (The actual Spanish slang word used frequently by Tony is "yeyo", which is pronounced "Yay-yo" due to Spanish pronunciation.
[edit] "The World is Yours"
A recently released game entitled Scarface: The World Is Yours, a quasi-sequel to the film, features an alternate ending and epilogue of sorts to the movie. In the opening scene of the game - the original "ending" scene of the movie - Montana is able to detect his would-be assassin and shoots him before escaping his mansion. He then spends the next few months hiding before beginning a quest to rebuild his empire. Montana was not voiced by Al Pacino, as years of chain smoking has altered his voice, but it should be noted that his voice actor in the game was selected by Pacino himself.
