51 GREATEST FICTIONAL BAD GUYS
#16. TONY MONTANA from SCARFACE
Every side-street portrait artist I pass on Granville has at least six stills from Scarface in glorious charcoal or ink ready for purchase. I’ve seen Oliver Stone twice in person, and every time the Q&A session begins with a strict precursor of “no questions about films”, someone ALWAYS manages to slip a Scarface question in. (By the way, what the hell is up with the no film question policy? Are we forking out good cash to hear his views on dish detergents?) It seems every rapper worships Montana as if he were some ancient, slumbering deity conjured up by H.P. Lovecraft. There isn’t any denying it: Tony Montana has become a modern day folk hero, right up there with Robin Hood and Pecos Bill.
And I guess the question is, is Tony so bad? Well, yes. Yes, he is. Which means your fifth-grade teacher was wrong: there are stupid questions.
But Tony is as all-American as outraged entitlement and cheese stuffed pizza. Tony’s an immigrant who desires more than he has (America was built on this kind of story!) He sees opportunity, takes it and climbs the ladder. He even sacrifices his own men to keep his boss’s assets safe (corporate interests before chainsaw dismemberment). He believes in family values (maybe loving his sister a little too much); distrusts the government and believes in a low tax bracket for the wealthy. He believes in second amendment rights for personal defense (the only person who can take down a bad guy with a gun is a morally gray anti-hero with a gun).
As far as I can tell, the only things un-American about him is his religious beliefs (Tony doesn’t believe in god), acquiring wealth through illegal means that are NOT accepted by the powers that be (ie. raping a fellow student at a top ten university, spilling tons of oil on a coastline, lighting a match on the U.S. financial system), and being a non-WASP immigrant from south of the border. Yikes. That last one is big. Like HUGE. Sorry, Tony, no picture on the $20 dollar bill for you — but we can all enjoy a wonderful black velvet sketch of you blasting away at competitors with an M16 over our fireplace. The world IS yours!
Tony: “In this country, you gotta make the money first. Then when you get the money, you get the power. Then when you get the power, then you get the women.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHngTC6KRnY
