Scarface: Limited Edition Ultimate Collector’s Series (Steelbook) (4K UHD Review)
Director
Brian De PalmaRelease Date(s)
1983 (November 11, 2025)Studio(s)
Universal Pictures/Martin Bregman Productions (Universal Pictures Home Entertainment)- Film/Program Grade: B
- Video Grade: A-
- Audio Grade: A-
- Extras Grade: A-
- Overall Grade: B+
Review
When full-time maverick and part-time movie mogul Howard Hughes decided that he wanted to make a gangster picture based on the life of Al Capone, he took no chances by buying the screen rights to the 1930 Armitage Trail novel Scarface—which may have been a work of fiction, but it was unquestionably inspired by Capone’s infamous criminal activities. Further taking no chances, Hughes brought in his Hell’s Angels collaborator Howard Hawks to produce and direct, with Ben Hecht (among others) penning the screenplay. Mind you, the final shooting script drifted far afield from Trail’s story, but hell, at least it still provided a swell title. Aided by a towering performance from Paul Muni in the lead role of Tony Camonte, the 1932 version of Scarface ended up becoming a gangster movie classic despite facing some challenges from the Hayes Office (and arguably, in some ways because of having to work around that censorship). So, it’s hardly surprising that Brian De Palma’s 1983 remake closes with a dedication to the two primary creative forces behind the original production:
“This film is dedicated to HOWARD HAWKS and BEN HECHT.”
Just like that, too, with their names in all caps in order to draw full attention to them. Which is somewhat ironic, because regardless of the dedication, De Palma’s film is about as respectful to Hawks and Hecht as they were to Armitage Trail—which is to say, not very. The 1932 Scarface drew the ire of the Hayes Office because it openly glamorized the criminal lifestyle that it was purportedly trying to condemn, but it still squeaked into theatres relatively intact because it relied on subtlety, innuendo, and some clever use of symbolic imagery. In comparison, De Palma’s Scarface is about as subtle as a sledgehammer to the groin—the gulf between the two films is as wide as the one between Preston Sturges and the Three Stooges. As a result, De Palma’s film faced censorship issues of its own with the MPAA, but it damned well deserved every bit of trouble that it received, because it was always intended to provoke. It’s an intentional exercise in wretched excess, with excessive levels of violence, language, melodrama, and overacting—it’s even got an excessive running time thrown in for good measure. When the most subtle thing in a film is a pounding synth score by Giorgio Moroder, clearly everything else is operating on a different level. Scarface throws restraint out the window from the opening title sequence, and it never looks back after that.
None of that should be particularly surprising given the creative team involved. Instead of Howard Hawks, Howard Hughes, Ben Hecht, and Paul Muni, it was the work of De Palma, producer Martin Bregman, writer Oliver Stone, and Al Pacino, the latter of whom was perched on the cusp of his decades-long slide into self-parody (and Scarface is the film that tipped him over the edge). But the revised story was the work of Stone, and “a Brian De Palma Film” or not, Scarface bears Stone’s heavy-handed fingerprints throughout. The original film was firmly planted in Al Capone’s Prohibition-era Chicago milieu, led by Italian-American immigrants, but the remake updates the setting to the cocaine trade and the influx of Cuban immigrants in Florida after Castro’s Mariel boatlift in 1980. Tony Camonte became Tony Montana (Pacino), a brash but penniless Cuban national whose hubris leads him to the top of the Miami drug trade. Yet his own proclivities toward personal excess are blatantly self-destructive, fueled by his failure to remember not to get high on your own supply, which leads to his eventual downfall.
The Eighties was the decade of wretched excess, much of it fueled by cocaine, so in some ways the excesses of Scarface seem perfectly appropriate. Tony Montana’s lifestyle is the very definition of over-the-top, so it makes sense that the film follows suit. From the almost childishly graphic language to the gleefully hyperbolic violence, by the time that Montana is burying his head in literal mountains of cocaine at the end of the film, it almost seems tame in comparison. The Hawks film had teased at Tony Camonte having questionable feelings about his sister Francesa, but De Palma made Tony Montana’s incestuous desires toward his own sister Gina (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio) manifest. And while Hawks eventually dodged the bullet of the Hayes Office mandated ending where Camonte is hanged for his crimes, his original ending still briefly shows the bootlegger “turning yellow” before going out in a blaze of glory (although an easy to miss look on Muni’s face does imply that it’s all an act). De Palma, on the other hand, has Montana so coked out of his mind that he can withstand a seemingly infinite hail of bullets in one of the most over-the-top endings of any gangster film ever made. “Nothing exceeds like excess,” Montana’s icy-cold girlfriend Elvira (Michelle Pfeiffer) told him earlier in the film, and De Palma took that lesson to heart.
The excesses of Scarface extend to the casting as well. While Cuban-American actors like Steven Bauer and Angel Salazar do play supporting roles, the rest of cast is filled with non-Latino actors playing the Cuban-American and other Latino characters: Pacino, Mastrantonio, Robert Loggia, F. Murray Abraham, Paul Shenar, and Mark Margolis (among others). That kind of casting was certainly common in classical Hollywood filmmaking, but while the Eighties were hardly free from it (paging Chiun in Remo Williams), it was already starting to wear a bit thin by 1983. Yet there’s no denying that the performances in Scarface are uniformly excellent despite any problematic casting, at least in terms of how the actors delivered the levels of excess that De Palma was after. Scarface is openly theatrical, and the acting follows suit. De Palma and Stone challenged them with excessive material, and they rose to the occasion with excessive overacting. Yet it all works, at least in context.
To be fair, Hughes, Hawks, and Hecht did intend their version of Scarface to be provocative, and provoke they did. But provocation in the Pre-Code era was of a markedly different sort than it was by the time that Bregman, De Palma, and Stone offered their remake in 1983. The collapse of the Production Code and the introduction of the more relaxed MPAA ratings system meant that filmmakers were continually pushing boundaries, and with Scarface, De Palma and company pushed those boundaries past the breaking point. Yet in a way, that’s exactly what Hawks and company did in 1932, so in that narrow sense (and that narrow sense only), the dedication to Hawks and Hecht makes a certain amount of sense. The gulf between the two films remains insurmountably wide, but they’re kindred spirits in terms of how they both thumbed their noses at the establishment. The world of provocation was theirs for the taking.
Cinematographer John A. Alonzo shot Scarface on 35mm film using Panavision Panaflex II cameras with Panavision C-series anamorphic lenses, framed at 2.39:1 for its theatrical release. (Surveillance footage was shot with a Panacam video camera using the same C-series lenses instead of standard video lenses, in order to capture sharper images than a normal video camera from the era could provide.) There’s no information available about Universal’s 4K master, but it’s safe to say that it was based on scans of the original camera negative, and it’s been graded for High Dynamic Range in HDR10 only. Alonzo used high-speed Eastman 5273 stock for much of the film, so it’s always had an intentionally gritty look to it, and all of that grit is reproduced perfectly in 4K. The image is sharp and clean but the grain is still intact, and while there’s a bit of softness in some of the optical work, it doesn’t stand out as much as it does in some other films. Thankfully, all of the problematic digital tinkering from the old HD version of Scarface is gone, and while the encode isn’t perfect, there aren’t any major artifacts to be seen.
This 4K master was produced relatively early in the 4K era, so the HDR grade is more aggressive than many newer catalogue remasters, but that’s partly defensible in this case. Alonzo passed away long before it was produced, but he told American Cinematographer in 1983 that “(Scarface) is a story of overwhelming amounts of money, crime, and violence. In other words, everything in Tony Montana’s way of life was exaggerated, and that was the visual key to Scarface.” In that spirit, it’s an appropriately exaggerated HDR grade, with deeply saturated colors, strong contrast, deep blacks, and vivid highlights. In fact, “vivid” is a perfect descriptor for the grade as a whole—it’s not necessarily realistic, but Scarface was never intended to be realistic. Tony Montana was always supposed to be bigger than life, and the colors are bigger than life in 4K. They’re heightened here, not attenuated in any way, just like everything else in the film from the performances to the melodrama. It’s an impressive upgrade over the old Blu-ray.
Primary audio is offered in English DTS:X and 2.0 DTS. Scarface was one of the last films to be released in four-track magnetic stereo, although the majority of release prints were optical mono instead (no Dolby Stereo in this case). Where things get a bit murkier is with the 2.0 surround track that’s been available since the LaserDisc and VHS-Hi-Fi days. Presumably it’s just a matrix-encoded 2.0 version of the original four channels, with no other alterations. While a few overseas DVDs offered a 4.0 Dolby Digital track that was a discrete encoding of those same four channels, domestic releases offered either 2.0 or a 5.1 remix, followed by a 7.1 remix on Blu-ray. So keep in mind that while the 2.0 is closer to the original theatrical mix than any of the remixes, it’s still only an approximation since there’s inevitably some channel bleed during decoding that wouldn’t have been present on the original 4-track mag versions.
In any event, this 2.0 track sounds like the same 2.0 track from previous releases, with encoded surrounds, and it’s definitely not a fold-down of the newer DTS:X mix. In fact, it sounds like a theatrical track that hasn’t been re-equalized for home video, because the top end is extremely bright and harsh, almost to the point of being grating at times. In comparison, the DTS:X track sounds much smoother and more balanced, which definitely benefits the Giorgio Moroder score and the various songs. It does have added sound effects like helicopters flying overhead, and some other effects like the gunfire have been replaced with something a bit more dynamic than what’s on the 2.0 track. That may be a bridge too far for some fans, but they all integrate well into the soundstage and don’t sound unnatural or exaggerated. In any event, the 2.0 track provides a matrix-encoded version of the original mix, so that’s still an option (although if you have an older receiver that can apply a re-EQ curve, that might help).
Additional audio options include Spanish and French 2.0 mono DTS, with optional English SDH, Spanish, and French subtitles.
Universal’s Amazon-exclusive Limited Edition Ultimate Collector’s Series 4K Ultra HD release of Scarface is a two-disc set that includes a Blu-ray with a 1080p copy of the film (in Steelbook packaging), as well as a Digital code on a paper insert tucked inside. It also includes an 8.25” x 11.75” ICONART print by Scanavo, along with a magnetic hanger for it and a wall-mount sticker. Everything comes housed inside an oversized 13” x 9.75” x 1.5” case with Tony Montana’s monogram on the cover, and it’s accompanied by an individually numbered certificate of authenticity (the edition is limited to 6,000 units). The discs themselves are identical to the previous UHD releases of Scarface, so it’s the same set of extras as well:
DISC ONE: UHD
- Scarface 35th Anniversary Reunion (UHD – 27:06)
DISC TWO: BD
- Scarface 35th Anniversary Reunion (HD – 27:06)
- The Scarface Phenomenon:
- Say Hello to the Bad Guy (HD – 11:22)
- Pushing the Limit (HD – 13:31)
- The World & Everything in It (HD – 13:40)
- The World of Tony Montana (SD – 11:38)
- The Rebirth (SD – 10:08)
- The Acting (SD – 15:05)
- The Creating (SD – 29:35)
- Deleted Scenes (SD – 22:29)
- Scarface: The TV Version (SD – 2:48)
- The Making of Scarface: The Video Game (SD – 12:05)
While most of the extras date back to Universal’s various LaserDisc, DVD, and Blu-ray releases of Scarface, they added one new extra for the 2019 UHD: the Scarface 35th Anniversary Reunion. It brought together Brian De Palma, Al Pacino, Michelle Pfeiffer, and Steven Bauer at a 2018 screening of Scarface that took place at the Beacon Theatre in New York City. They tell stories about the making of the film, ratings issues during its release, and its legacy. The also discuss the possibilities of a new remake.
The Scarface Phenomenon is a three-part retrospective look at the film, produced and directed by Laurent Bouzereau. Brian De Palma, producer Martin Bregman, Steven Bauer, Robert Loggia, Richard Belzer, and Angel Salazar are all on hand to offers some memories about the film and the impact of seeing it for the first time, as well as reflections on its legacy. They’re joined by an eclectic group of people who provide some outside perspectives about the influential nature of Scarface: filmmakers Eli Roth, Keith Gordon, Billy Corben, and Antoine Fuqua; authors Ken Tucker, L.A. Banks, and Robert Saviano; critic Julie Salamon; television host Jillian Barberie Reynolds; Cyprus Hill’s Sen Dog; and the irrepressible Maria Conchita Alonso.
The World of Tony Montana is a brief featurette about the state of the drug trade during the era in which Scarface is set, featuring interviews with DEA agents Jerry Speziale, Dan Simmons, and John Fernandes, joined by Eric Gillin from Maxim and Brandon Peters from XXL. Or, at least that’s what it’s supposed to be doing in theory, but in practice, the needs of tying everything that they say to Scarface gets in the way of the harsh reality that lay behind the film.
The Rebirth, The Acting, and The Creating all came from the 52-minute making-of documentary that was originally created for Universal’s Signature Collection LaserDisc boxed set, once again produced and directed by Laurent Bouzereau. It features interviews with De Palma, Bregman, Oliver Stone, Al Pacino, and John A. Alonzo, and considering that two out of the five aren’t represented elsewhere in the set, it’s an invaluable archive of their thoughts about the film. The Rebirth covers the conception of the story and the script, including what was drawn from the Hawks film (and what wasn’t). The Acting focuses on the performances, especially Pacino’s two-dimensional take on Tony Montana, but it does explain how Pfeiffer ended up getting the role of Elvira. The Creating delves into the production of the film, so it’s naturally the most interesting of the three segments. It covers practical details like the locations and the ratings issues, with De Palma relaying his repeated struggles with the MPAA. (The chainsaw scene caused many of the issues, but the ratings board even called the gunfire into question.) This is an old school making-of documentary that’s better than 90% of the extras on newer home video releases, so don’t skip it just because of its age—Bouzereau has always delivered.
The rest of the extras include a collection of Deleted Scenes, most of which are raw outtakes with the slates at the front (including the actors doing their own slates by clapping). While much of it is inessential, there are a few moments that plug some holes in the final cut, like the introduction of Nick the Pig (who appears out of nowhere in the actual film), and Tony hiring his lawyer. There’s also The Making of Scarface: The Video Game, which is a promo for the 2006 game Scarface: The World is Yours. The most memorable of all, needless to say, is Scarface: The TV Version, which collects some of the edited, alternate, and redubbed footage from the network television version of the film. It’s a hilarious reminder of the high hurdles that studios had to clear in order to get films like Scarface shown on the public airwaves.
The only notable extras that are missing from previous releases of Scarface are the picture-in-picture track that was on the original Blu-ray and the DVD featurette Def Jam Presents: Origins of a Hip Hop Classic, the latter of which presumably had to be dropped over rights issues. Some DVD, Blu-ray, and UHD editions also included the 1932 version of Scarface on a separate DVD or Blu-ray, but since Criterion secured the rights to that film in 4K, it couldn’t be included here. So, is this Limited Edition Ultimate Collector’s Series worth picking up if you already own one of Universal’s other UHD releases? Since all it adds is the box and the ICONART metal print, probably not. But if you’ve haven’t picked any of them up yet and appreciate a bit of swag, this one is worth your consideration. It’s still a great 4K upgrade for an undeniably problematic film.
- Stephen Bjork
(You can follow Stephen on social media at these links: Twitter, Facebook, BlueSky, and Letterboxd).