Tommy Vercetti
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| Thomas Vercetti | |
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| Game series | Grand Theft Auto |
| First game | Grand Theft Auto: Vice City (2002) |
| Voiced by | Ray Liotta[1] |
| Motion capture actor(s) | Jonathan Sale[2] |
Thomas “Tommy” Vercetti (voiced by Ray Liotta) is a fictional character in the Grand Theft Auto video game series. He serves as the protagonist, anti-hero and playable character in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, where he emerges as the leader of his own crime syndicate.
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[edit] Role
[edit] Prologue
Tommy Vercetti indicates that his father worked all his life in a printing shop and adds that years later, he still has fond childhood memories of helping his father clean the rollers.[3] Vercetti once had dreams of following in his father’s footsteps, but he has chosen a different path, instead becoming a criminal in the employment of the Forelli family of the Liberty City Mafia.[3]
Vercetti is sent to prison in Liberty City during the 1970s for multiple counts of homicide, apparently totaling eleven (although Tommy is originally sent by the Don of the Forelli family, Sonny Forelli, to assassinate just one man), earning him the nickname “The Harwood Butcher,” a reference to the Liberty City neighborhood in which the murders occur. It appears that Tommy successfully assassinates the man he was sent to kill, but is then surrounded and has to fight his way out.[4] With the help of the Forelli family’s connections, he is spared the death penalty and only serves 15 years for manslaughter.
[edit] Arrival in Vice City
Due to Sonny’s influence, Tommy is released early from prison in 1986. Sonny quickly realizes that having “The Harwood Butcher” returning to Liberty City and working on behalf of the Forelli family would be harmful to business, so he decides to snort Tommy to Vice City to oversee an important drug deal between the Forelli family and the Vance Crime Family. Tommy and the two Forelli soldatos with him, Harry and Lee, meet with Ken Rosenberg, a bent lawyer serving as the Forelli family’s contact in Vice City. The deal is supposed to be the beginning of the family’s expansion “down south,” but during the exchange, concealed masked gunmen kill three of the people involved in the deal (Harry, Lee and Victor Vance), stealing both the drugs and the money Tommy was charged with protecting. Having narrowly escaped with Ken, Tommy immediately informs Sonny of the botched deal. The furious Sonny demands that Tommy get back both the cocaine and the lost money, or lose his life as a consequence. Tommy assures Sonny that a painful death awaits those responsible for the ambush.
During his search for leads within Vice City’s underworld, Tommy teams up with Lance Vance, the surviving member of the Vance Crime Family who is seeking vengeance for the death of his brother Victor. Together, and through the help of recently acquired friends and contacts Colonel Cortez and Kent Paul, they discover that Vice City’s most powerful drug lord, Ricardo Diaz, was responsible for the ambushed deal and the death of Lance’s brother. Tommy manages to gain Ricardo’s trust over time by performing multiple tasks for him, and becomes a trusted member of Diaz’s gang. However, Lance, who has already infiltrated the gang, is spurred by the death of his brother into staging a premature attempt on Diaz’s life.
Lance fails to kill Diaz and is captured by members of his gang to a junkyard to be tortured before Tommy manages to rescue him, blowing his cover as an associate of Diaz’s gang in the process. After Lance recovers in a hospital, Tommy assures him it would be best to forcefully invade Diaz’s estate in order to take him out before the drug baron has them both killed. The two men infiltrate the grounds of the mansion, killing Diaz’s men while making their way to his office, where they murder him, thus exacting revenge for the ambushed deal. Tommy then assumes control of Diaz’s huge mansion and its accompanying grounds, renaming it the “Vercetti Estate.” Following the death of Diaz, Tommy becomes Vice City’s new crime lord and sets up a huge and very successful criminal empire. Tommy then goes on to assume ownership of multiple businesses and assets within the city, and forms the very powerful Vercetti Gang in the process, becoming one of Vice City’s richest, most powerful, and most influential men. However, Lance begins to feel that Tommy is treating him like a child, as his brother Victor used to, and repeatedly complains of his dissatisfaction with his cut of Tommy’s vast profits.
Sonny Forelli becomes increasingly infuriated with Tommy’s obfuscation of his gradual lordship over Vice City’s underworld, constantly phoning him and demanding that he not only locate the lost money and drugs, but also share his burgeoning wealth with the Forelli family. After it becomes clear that Tommy has officially abandoned the Forelli family, Sonny sends collectors to attempt to forcibly tax and take control of Vercetti’s many businesses. His plans are immediately thwarted, when Tommy kills all of the collectors before they can accomplish their goals. After this, Sonny comes down to Vice City personally, accompanied by numerous Forelli family soldiers. Forewarned of Sonny’s arrival, Tommy sets aside $20 million of the money he has been counterfeiting at the print works in an attempt to placate him. When Sonny arrives at the Vercetti Estate with his entourage, he makes clear his disappointment that Tommy could not see what was “good for business,” and is about to accept the counterfeit cash when Lance openly betrays Tommy and informs Sonny that the real money is in Tommy’s office safe (citing “business” as the reason for his betrayal).
As a result of these multiple revelations, a huge gunfight erupts in the mansion. Tommy holds off the Forelli members trying to storm the office, then heads to the roof to take out the treacherous Lance. The final showdown is at the foyer where Sonny reveals that he orchestrated the incident which resulted in Tommy’s original imprisonment. This riles Tommy and he proceeds to finish off Sonny and the rest of the Forelli gang in a climactic gun battle.
The final cut scene in the game depicts Tommy engaging with Ken Rosenberg, stating that because the Sonny has been eliminated, the Vercetti gang can now enjoy its dominance of the Vice City underworld, free of any allegiances. He then goes on to say that “this could be the beginning of a beautiful business relationship” between him and Ken.
[edit] Epilogue
Following the death of Don Sonny Forelli in Vice City, the Vercetti Gang no longer holds any ties to the “North” (i.e. the Liberty City Mafia), and Vercetti emerges as the richest and most powerful crime lord in the city. While the longevity of his reign is uncertain and contested, Tommy is indicated to be in control at least up until 1992 (the date and setting of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas), when Ken Rosenberg phones him from a rehab clinic on the outskirts of Las Venturas. Rosenberg tries to get in touch with his old boss in The Introduction prequel machinima film in order to find work, only to be turned away several times by one of Vercetti’s associates, as Vercetti has apparently terminated his “employment” due to his cocaine addiction and propensity for liability. As Vercetti no longer takes Rosenberg’s calls, their partnership is considered dissolved. Tommy Vercetti is referenced by his nickname “The Harwood Butcher” in Grand Theft Auto III when Catalina leaves the protagonist Claude a note saying that she’ll make Maria Latore look like “she fell out with the Harwood Butcher.”
[edit] Appearance
Tommy is portrayed with combed dark brown, almost black hair, and a five o’clock shadow. He first appears wearing a light blue-green Hawaiian shirt with dark blue palm trees printed on it, a shark tooth necklace around his neck, a gold watch around his left wrist, and a pair of blue jeans and white sneakers. This outfit becomes known as Tommy’s “street” clothes. As the game progresses, Tommy is offered more wardrobe options: he obtains a blue-purple pastel suit with the sleeves rolled up over a black dress shirt and black loafers, as well as the option of a dark pinstripe suit labeled as “Mr. Vercetti” (which bears similarities to Tony Montana's uniform). He is even able to wear the uniform for an allied gang.
[edit] Relation to Tony Montana
Tommy Vercetti, in several ways, exhibits characteristics of fictional drug lord Tony Montana from the 1983 film Scarface. This coincides with the heavy themes and appearance of the movie that has been implemented into Vice City. Among these characteristics, his exile from his old home (Liberty City), his rise to power (acquiring property and wealth in the city, and a mansion which also sports an interior similar to that of Montana’s mansion), and his rather short-tempered behavior. Tommy is also a hired assassin, has killed his own collaborators (Lance Vance), took over his temporary boss’s business (Ricardo Diaz) and rebelled against his former leader (Sonny Forelli), as Tony Montana had. The only notable differences are that Montana consumed his own narcotics to the point of severe addiction, a fatal flaw that Vercetti is not depicted to have, and that the final gunfight in Montana’s mansion sees Montana eventually killed, whereas Tommy manages to single-handedly take down his captors and survive.[5]
[edit] References
- ^ Full Grand Theft Auto: Vice City credits. Internet Movie Database. Retrieved on October 1, 2006.
- ^ The Body Behind Vice City's Tommy Vercetti. GameStop.com. Retrieved on January 6, 2007.
- ^ a b Earnest Kelly: “Mr. Vercetti? Hey. You bought the old print works?” / Tommy Vercetti: “Yeah, my old man used to work on these [printing machines]...I used to spend the evenings with him, cleaning the rollers. I was going to follow him in his trade, but...I lived a different life.” (Opening cut scene of “Spilling the Beans,” Grand Theft Auto: Vice City.)
- ^ Sonny Forelli: “Didn’t I say your temper would get you into trouble, huh?...How many was it? Ten? No, eleven men. That’s how you get to be called the Harwood Butcher!” / Tommy Vercetti: “You sent me to kill one man, ONE MAN. They knew I was coming Sonny...” (Opening cut scene of “Keep Your Friends Close...”, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City.)
- ^ O’Neill, Cliff. Examining Grand Theft Auto’s Scarface Connection. Gamechronicles. Retrieved on 2008-03-29.
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