Tony Montana
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Antonio "Tony" Montana | |
|---|---|
 Tony during the movie's final scene |
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| Portrayed by | Al Pacino |
| Information | |
| Gender | Male |
| Age | 42 |
| Date of birth | 3/5/1940 Havana, Cuba |
| Date of death | 2/7/1983 Miami, Florida |
| Occupation | Drug lord |
| Family | Gina Montana (sister), Georgina Montana (mother) |
| Spouse(s) | Elvira Hancock |
| Children | Unknown |
| Relatives | He had an American father who took him to English-languaged movie however; he left leaving Mama Montana with Gina and Tony. |
Antonio "Tony" Montana is a fictional character in the Brian DePalma film Scarface and the video game Scarface: The World Is Yours, portrayed by Al Pacino. Oliver Stone came up with the name by combining the last name of his then-favorite football player (Joe Montana) and the first name from the main character of the 1932 film version, Tony Camonte, played by Paul Muni.
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[edit] In the film
Tony Montana arrives in Miami from his native Cuba on the Mariel Boatlift in 1980. Montana is refused entry into the US and sent along with his best friend Manny Ribera (Steven Bauer) to a make-shift detention camp. In the camp, Tony carries out a cartel hit that earns him and his friends an early release, green cards and a job washing dishes at a tiny food stand.
Tony and Manny soon quit their jobs after Omar (F. Murray Abraham) offers them a job to do a cocaine exchange with some dangerous Colombians. The deal goes horribly wrong. Angel, another refugee, and Tony enter and are ambushed, and Angel is dismembered with a chainsaw. In the commotion, Manny is shot, but the group escapes with the buy money and the drugs. Montana and his associates earn the respect and admiration of a powerful drug kingpin, Frank Lopez (Robert Loggia), who offers them jobs.
Tony sets to establish himself as a major player in the cocaine industry. Tony even has his sights on taking Lopez's mistress Elvira Hancock (Michelle Pfeiffer). Tony hopes to realize a dream he once thought was impossible: to have "the world and everything in it."
Tony then visits his mother (Miriam Colon) and his sister, Gina (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio). He doesn't get along with his mother, who recognizes him for the sociopath he is. He adores Gina, but he brutalizes any other man who tries to form a relationship with her; It implied that he harbors unacknowledged incestuous feelings for her.
Tony wins the trust of Alejandro Sosa (Paul Shenar), a Bolivian drug lord. Through his dealings with Sosa, Tony quickly rises in Miami's underworld; he survives an assassination attempt, violently overthrows Lopez, and eventually marries Elvira.
A corrupt police officer named Mel Bernstein (Harris Yulin) meets with Tony in the Babylon Club, where he proposes to "tax" him on his transactions. There the two negotiate a large bribe for Bernstein, along with first-class airline tickets to London. Tony is shot at by two Colombian hitmen in the Babylon, and narrowly escapes in the shootout that follows. Tony then sets up a trap for Bernstein, and has Manny shoot him dead. Tony then gives Frank's henchman, Ernie, a job. He then leaves and takes Elvira to his house. Tony had overthrown Frank, and a blimp with the caption "THE WORLD IS YOURS" hovered in the distance.
Tony soon completes his business deal with Sosa. On his first deal he makes $75 million. Soon after, Frank is killed and Tony takes over the distribution. He buys 2000 kilo of cocaine from Sosa which he sells for $75 million dollars. Which was laundered for him by a corrupt banker, but he wants more and is soon making $10–$15 million a month. Tony marries Elvira and buys a lavish mansion, even buying Gina her own beauty parlor. Meanwhile, Manny and Gina began dating behind his back, and Tony and Elvira become heavily addicted to cocaine.
Tony is later caught attempting to launder $1.3 million by undercover cops, and faces up to three years in prison. Sosa confronts Tony and informs him that he can make sure he does not face any prison time, but only if he supervises the assassination of a journalist who is troubling Sosa's entire drug operation in Bolivia. Reluctantly, Tony agrees and plants a car bomb. Tony and the hitman, Alberto, are then surprised to see the man's wife and two daughters enter the car with him at his hotel. Repulsed at the idea of murdering children Tony demands that the plan be aborted, but the hitman insists on obeying Sosa's orders. In a cocaine-induced rage, Tony murders Alberto.
Manny and Gina disappear and get married while Tony is in New York; they believe that in joining together respectably, they would win Tony's approval. Tony returns to his mansion, where by then his wife has left him, and learns that Sosa has sent thugs after him. Then he speaks to his mother over the phone and finds out about Gina's disappearance. He finds Manny and Gina together, flies into a rage and kills Manny. He then takes his hysterical sister to his house.
Gina then berates him for his sins, speculating that he is so protective towards her because he wants her for himself; she says for him to seduce her, she takes out a gun and begins shooting at him, wounding him in the leg. Meanwhile, Sosa's hitmen invade Tony's mansion, killing his henchmen and, accidentally, Gina. Wild with rage, Tony charges the man and throws him off his balcony into the pool below, where he shoots him. Soon, he notices the soldiers Sosa sent to murder him on his surveillance system and sits on the floor of his office, sobbing over Gina's corpse as Chi Chi bangs on his door, pleading for him to open it. Tony, completely oblivious, watches from the surveillance monitor as Chi Chi is shot dead in the back. Sosa's soldiers gather in Tony's main hall, four of them in front of his door; ready to ambush him.
Shouting in his cocaine-induced rage, Tony takes an M16 rifle with an M203 grenade launcher attachment from his weapon locker and loads up on ammunition. Opposition mounts just outside of the door to his room ready to take him out. He yells his iconic catchphrase "SAY HELLO TO MY LITTLE FRIEND!" and blows the door apart. He walks out calmly as he kills each one with his rifle. He then walks out to his balcony and opens fire on his would-be assassins. The assassins fire back as well, hitting Tony several times, but he always gets back up. As Tony makes his last stand, Sosa's assassin silently walks up to him from behind and shoots him in the back. Mortally wounded, he plunges several feet below into the fountain, dead. With fitting irony, the camera pans up to show the gruesome scene crowned by the statue behind Tony's body reading The World Is Yours.
[edit] In popular culture
Since the release of Scarface, the Tony Montana character has been widely referenced and parodied in 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 appetite for violence.
Each DVD release inspired the largely Hispanic population in Hudson County, New Jersey 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.
The animated series, The Boondocks pays homage to Tony Montana in its season 1 intro. In the intro, Riley Freeman is modeled after Tony Montana's classic picture to Scarface. Also, in the first episode of the series, Riley is shown wearing a similar suit to that of Tony Montana's in the movie.
In the popular animated series, The Batman, the classic Batman villain The Ventriloquist is featured with a revised design for his puppet. The puppet in the show is dressed in Tony Montanna's trademark white suit, rather than a wardrobe reminiscent of Al Capone, which he wore in the original comic books.
Lines from the film are also frequently sampled in 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' "The World is Yours" takes its title from 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. Jay-Z's 1996 debut album, Reasonable Doubt, also samples Omar's lines to Montana regarding the deal with the Colombian's on the intro to the song Can't Knock The Hustle.
Various Latin rap artists such as Immortal Technique, Fat Joe, Big Pun, Cuban Link and The Beatnuts have sampled lines from the movie.
The game Grand Theft Auto: Vice City features many references to the film Scarface and to Tony Montana himself. Among those are that of the main character, Tommy Vercetti, as he has a botched drug deal at the beginning of the story, he is exiled from his old home, and eventually rises to power in the new city he's in by killing the town's biggest drug lord, who is his former friend. During gameplay, Tommy acquires a suit that is identical to the one Montana wears during the film's climatic gun battle. Also, Vercetti's former employeer ambushes him at his new mansion and tries to kill him, the big difference being that Tommy, unlike Montana, didn't use his cocaine for himself, and in turn, manages to survive the final gun battle. As well, in a subtle nod to the infamous "chainsaw torture" scene in Scarface, in Vice City there is a hotel room that is accessible during the game where the bathroom is found to have blood-stains in the shape of feet and hands, the bath tub is filled with blood complete with a hand poking out of it, and a chainsaw is lying on the floor nearby.
Tony Montana is referenced in an episode of the HBO series The Wire. In season 1, episode 12, Cleaning Up, the character of Detective Jimmy McNulty, watching a SWAT team surround the headquarters of a drug kingpin, quips, "Do they think it's Tony Montana up there? These guys probably haven't touched a gun in years."
[edit] Scarface: The World Is Yours
The video game titled 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 detects his would-be assassin and shoots him before escaping his mansion. He then spends the next three months hiding before beginning a quest to rebuild his empire.
[edit] External links
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