Tony Montana
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| Antonio "Tony" Montana | |
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 Tony Montana in his final moments.
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| Born | December 13, 1940 Havana, Cuba |
| Died | 11 October 1983 Shady Grove, Miami, Florida |
Antonio "Tony" Montana is the fictional main character in Brian DePalma's 1983 movie Scarface played by Al Pacino, and voiced by André Sogliuzzo in the video game Scarface: The World Is Yours.
"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".
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[edit] Life
Tony Montana was a Cuban refugee with a criminal record, the son of Georgina "Mama" Montana.
Arriving in Miami, Florida via the Mariel boatlift after five years in a Havana prison, Tony and his best friend Manolo Ribera are sent to Freedomtown, a detention camp. One month later, Manny manages to obtain green cards for himself, Tony and an associate, Angel Fernandez, along with a job washing dishes at a small food stand by assassinating Emilio Rebenga, a former aide to Fidel Castro, during a riot. Tony and Manny successfully murder Rebenga, and are released from the camp. They take up their jobs at the food stand soon, but quit the job when they take another job from Omar Suarez, to exchange some cocaine for money from "Hector the Toad" and several other Colombians at the Sun Ray hotel. Even though the deal goes horrifically awry, Angel Fernandez being killed in the process, Tony manages to grab the cocaine while keeping the drug money. After returning the money and drugs to their boss, they begin working for powerful yet affable drug kingpin, Frank Lopez.
As Tony becomes more and more powerful, making money and doing deals for Lopez (whom he grows to despise), Tony visits his Mama and sister Gina, the person he cared for most. His mother rejected him, resenting him for what he had become, and threw him out of her house. This causes him great pain, as he was fiercely overprotective of Gina, forbidding her to date any men and brutalizing potential boyfriends as he attempts to look out for her. However, Tony became close to Frank's girlfriend Elvira Hancock, and met Bolivian drug lord Alejandro Sosa while on a trip with Omar Suarez to negotiate with Sosa.
During that meeting, Omar is exposed by Sosa as an informant, and Montana watches with Sosa as Omar is hanged from a helicopter by Sosa's men. Sosa and Tony then continue to negotiate a deal. Tony returns to Miami and meets with Frank who doubts Sosa's story that Omar was a "stoolie" and is suspicious of Montana, especially since his negotiations with Sosa resulted in a deal of 2,000kg of cocaine. Frank tells Tony to stall his deal with Sosa. This aggravates Tony and he decides to leave Frank's organization and go independent. However, Tony continues to pursue Elvira intentionally to aggravate his former employer.
[edit] Ascendancy and dealings with Sosa
A corrupt police officer named Mel Bernstein meets with Tony in the Babylon Club, having heard of Tony's upcoming transaction, where he proposes to "tax" Montana on his transactions. There the two negotiate a large bribe for Bernstein. Tony is shot at by two Colombian hitmen in the Babylon, and narrowly escapes in the shootout that follows. He makes it to Nick the Pig's apartment, and from there he summons Chi Chi and Manny. Tony sets a trap for Frank, telling Nick the Pig to call him at 3am and imitate the hitman by telling him that they "fucked up, he got away." Tony, Manny and Chi Chi then visit Frank at his car dealership. There, Tony watches as Frank receives the call from Nick the Pig. However, Frank pretends to be talking to Elvira, and Tony has Manny shoot Frank in the heart as Mel sits by and watches. Tony then shoots him in the gut and then once more in the heart, killing him. Tony then gives Frank's henchman Ernie a job. He then leaves and takes Elvira to his house.
Tony had soon completed his business deal with Sosa. On his first deal he made $75 million, which was laundered for him by a corrupt banker, but he wanted more and was soon making $10–$50 million a month. Tony married Elvira and bought a lavish mansion, even buying Gina her own beauty parlour. Meanwhile, Manny and Gina began dating behind his back, and Tony and Elvira both become heavily addicted to cocaine.
Tony is later caught attempting to launder $3 million by undercover cops, and faces up to three years in prison for money laundering and tax evasion. 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 by revealing him as the drug lord he is. Reluctantly, Tony agrees. Planting a car bomb, Tony and the hitman tail the journalist's car with a remote-controlled detonator. They are to blow his car up with the explosives in front of the United Nations building, but are surprised to see the man's wife and two daughters enter the car with him at his hotel. Tony, now extremely reluctant to continue with the hit, becomes increasingly agitated with the hitman, who refuses to deviate from Sosa's orders, until Tony completely snaps. In a cocaine-induced rage, he murders the hitman who was supposed to kill the journalist, screaming at his dead body deliriously.
[edit] Downfall and death
Manny and Gina disappeared and married whilst Tony was in New York; they believed that joining together respectably, they would win Tony's approval. Tony returned to his mansion, but by then his wife had left him. He spoke to his mother over the phone and found out about Gina's disappearance from her. He then snorted more cocaine and talked to an irate Sosa. After this, he visited his Mama at her home and then went looking for Gina. He found Manny and Gina together, flew into a rage and shot Manny twice, killing him. Gina informed him that they had just gotten married as she sobs over his corpse, and that they did it that way so as not to make him angry. In shock, Tony returns home with a distraught and furious Gina.
At the mansion Tony snorts more cocaine from the enormous piles on his desk as Gina walks into into his office, then begins berating him for his sins, speculating that he was so protective towards her because he wanted her for himself; following this she takes out a gun and begins shooting at him, wounding him in the leg, all the while telling him to fuck her. Meanwhile, Sosa's hitmen invade Tony's mansion, killing his henchmen. One of Sosa's men opens fire on Gina as she shoots at Tony, believing him to be the source of the gunfire. 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 watches as Chi Chi is shot dead, and 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 assault rifle with an M203 grenade launcher attachment from his weapon locker, screams out the famous line "Say hello to my little friend," and blows the door apart, killing the four men. He then walks to the top of his balcony and opens fire on his would-be assassins, killing many of them. Eventually, he is disarmed, and, under the influence of cocaine, stands at the banister, taunting the men as he jumps around wildly, taking their gunshots seemingly feeling no pain, not even acknowledging that he is being shot. However, by this time, Sosa's right-hand man (known as The Skull) had found the grappling hook that Gina's murderer had used to enter Tony's room, and climbed up the outdoor balcony with his weapon in hand. As Tony taunted his opponents and took their gunfire at the banister, the hitman approached him from behind and shot him in the back with his sawn-off shotgun. Tony flies off of the balcony, breaking the banister, and lands in the pool below, finally dead. The water turns a sickening shade of red, and in one final twist of irony, the camera pans up to show the gruesome scene crowned by the statue behind Tony's dead body reading The World Is Yours.
[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" Montana's crew wears in the beginning of the movie, neglecting the flashy suits which he wears for the majority of the film.
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 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. In the song "My Buddy" by G-Unit, they use the actual line "Say hello to my little friend!" in the intro. 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.
Various Latin rap artists such as Fat Joe, Big Pun, Cuban Link and The Beatnuts have sampled famous lines from the movie and pay regular homage to the Montana character.
[edit] "The World is Yours"
A recently released video 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. Montana was instead voiced by André Sogliuzzo, who was hand selected by Pacino himself.
Tony Montana, after leaving Miami for three months, returns and builds up his cocaine empire again and eventually kills rival gang leaders and drug dealers. These include (in order) the Diaz Brothers, Nacho Contreras, Gaspar Gomez, and finally Alejandro Sosa. The game also boasts many A-list voices, such as Ricky Gervais, Bam Margera, Michael York and James Woods.
