10 Movie Characters Who Were Perfectly Cast (The Second Time)

8. Tony Montana - Al Pacino (Scarface)

The Original

The original, 1932 Scarface, made by Howard Hughes, is great enough to have been submitted (and accepted) to the National Film Registry, so there's no argument that it's in any way poor. In the lead role of Tony Camonte (a thinly-veiled stand-in for Al Capone), Paul Muni is also very good (though contemporary Ben Hecht didn't think he worked as Capone).

Second Time's The Charm...

No matter how good Muni could have been, he'd have a hard job ever competing directly with the man who was recast as the newly renamed Tony Montana for Brian de Palma's remake. He is effervescent, terrifying and completely unhinged and his performance is a touring portrait of spiralling excess.

This was also the role that seemed to set the model for what Pacino's acting "type" would be - intensity, fire, explosive outbursts - rather than the subtler, arguably better performance in The Godfather. For a lot of people, Pacino is still playing different degrees of Scarface elsewhere, which says a lot about how well he was cast.