Scarface

Pros: Direction, Photography, Muni, Raft, Script
Cons: None, really, but some will find it old and cliched.

"Do it first, do it yourself and keep on doing it." Tony Camonte

Director Howard Hawks created the definitive gangster movie in "Scarface." One of the original talkie gangster films along with Little Caesar and Public Enemy,...

Pros: direction, acting, characters
Cons: none

One of the premier movies of the gangster film genre is Scarface. Directed and co-produced by Howard Hawkes, this film tells the hard-hitting story of the rise and fall of a notorious Prohibition-era gangster. In one of his first films, Hawkes'...

Pros: Great fictionalization of Al Capone's rise to power, humor, allows for over-analyzing
Cons: The moralizing inserts, some of the stereotype humor wears thin

Al Capone was probably the most famous gangster of his day, mostly thanks to his brutal ambition and love of the limelight. While he wasn't as big as history remembers him, he does have a number of number one hits to his name. His feuds with Dion ...

Pros: Quick and brutal, exploits a situation still current when the film was made.
Cons: Unsubtle, old-fashioned acting, etc (this being early-30's cinema)

A life of crime would seem way too complicated for me, but what do I know? I just think it would be way too much trouble to commit all of these acts, which could get you killed, arrested, whatever, just because you want to have a lot of money... well, ...

Pros: fast-paced and full of action, very influential, well directed
Cons: violent, exaggerated characters, dialogue and events, moralizing

Along with Little Caesar (1930) and Public Enemy (1931), Scarface was instrumental in making mobster crime dramas one of the biggest movie genres of the 1930s.

The film was obviously based upon the life of the most...