Denzel Washington thinks ‘Scarface’ gets “more credit than it’s worth”
When I was old enough to graduate from Pixar flicks and start progressively being exposed to the blood and guts of adult films, my dad made sure it always seemed to centre around a familiar cohort of Italian-American actors. Ray Liotta, Robert De Niro and Al Pacino were all very much on order when I asked to get stuck into a film.
There were undoubtedly legends of the silver screen during a period of time, delivering hit after hit in the name of the mafia. Goodfellas, The Godfather and of course, Scarface gave a crash course on cinematic brilliance, while somewhat warping my perception of reality and conflict resolution. Of course, over time, the second part fell away and what I was left with was a continued catalogue of filmmaking brilliance that kept me interested with every new watch.
But there is undoubtedly an underlying level of machismo that influences our enjoyment of these films. Sure, within all of these films and particularly in the case of Goodfellas, where Scorsese is concerned, there is a narrative underbelly that speaks to much more than a sort of voyeuristic watching of violence.
There’s comments on corruption, skewed moral compasses and the desperate desire for power and how that runs a crack through everyday society. But not all of that is apparent to all viewers. For some that gets lost in the shadows of 9mm handguns and bags of cocaine. For some, that is the primary intent of the film, to celebrate the debaucherous underbelly of the criminal world and glamourise the dangerous lives us mortals are too scared to live.
It was a genre that Denzel Washington put his hand to also, in 2007 with film American Gangster. Loosely based on the criminal career of Frank Lucas, Washington plays a similarly power hungry drug lord to Al Pacino’s Tony Montana. But it’s a little more subtle in its celebration of unbridled greed and power, and thus plays into the narrative of corruption more.
But in the means of pitting Hollywood icons against one another, upon the release of American Gangster, critics were keen to label the role of Lucas as Washington’s very own Montana. One that he was quick to shut down in the interest of highlighting Scarface’s overall lack of nuance.
“Scarface gets more credit than it’s worth,” Washington said, adding, “Scarface didn’t change people. People were already living that. Scarface was just a good movie.”
So how, in comparison, did American Gangster change people? Well, a key part of the storyline is Lucas flipping on the criminal world to inform the authorities and, in turn, protect himself. Therein lies perhaps a major difference for it undermines the supposed masculine integrity of these criminal druglords, who in a moment of crisis protect themselves.
Moreover, it undercuts the entire hero complex these criminal films often fall into and instead raises questions of moral corruption. Through the continued exposure of corrupt police work throughout the film, it comments more directly on the infected system in which all sides of the story live. So maybe in that light, Scarface was just a good movie. What does that make American Gangster?
