3. Scarface (1983)
Say the following words out loud: crime doesn't pay. How long did it take? Two seconds? Maybe three, if you tried to be dramatic? Put simply,
Scarface is a crime drama that takes three hours to say what you yourself can say in three seconds. What more do you need? It's not just that the premise or story of
Scarface is overly simple - that's not enough to earn a film a place on this list. It's that the film doesn't entirely follow through on all its attempts to add substance (though it has plenty of substances on show). It certainly looks distinctive, thanks in no small part to music from Giorgio Moroder and cinematography from
Chinatown's John A. Alonzo. But even with all its memorable violence and meme-worthy dialogue, it's far too shallow to warrant three hours of your time. I like Brian De Palma as a director. At his best he's a very distinctive storyteller, who embraces cinema's most lurid aspects and uses them to his advantage. I also think, for all my misgivings about him, that Oliver Stone can be a talented writer. But
Scarface is pure indulgence on the part of everyone involved: Al Pacino's over-the-top performance is symptomatic of everyone having so much fun that they forget to rein things in when it really matters. It's not an awful film by any means, but it is an awfully long one.