I won’t say it. I won’t. OK, fine:
“Say hello to my little friend!”
Happy now?
You learn something new every day. It may count against my cred as a film blogger/cinephile extraordinaire, but I did not know that there was a Scarface remake in the pipeline until about ten minutes ago. But there is, and now we know his ethnicity too! Which was apparently a bit of a secret up until now.
According to The Film Stage, this newest incarnation of Scarface will feature a … Mexican! That’s right: he’s been an Italian, a Cuban and now he is a Mexican! We’re rounding the corner on this one. In twenty years, who knows? An Inuit? Only time will tell!
I jest, of course. It has indeed been confirmed that the second remake of Howard Hawks’s original Scarface, which starred Paul Muni as an Italian-American hood making his way up in the boot-legging world, will feature someone – but who? – as a Mexican immigrant dealing with Mexican drug cartels in, presumably, Mexico and America. There will be mobsters, explosions, soldiers and lots and lots of cocaine. Or maybe we’ll take on another drug du jour? The original had Scarface running alcohol; the famed Al Pacino remake gave us coke. Perhaps this one will take on something else entirely? I understand that crystal meth and bath salts are very popular right now.
I might sound a wee bit facetious right now, but this whole thing is not such a bad idea. The original Scarface is a piece of gangland history, the remake is simply classic. This one sounds like it’s trying to remain topical. I do have a bit of a problem with the interchangeability of ethnicity, though. First the Italians were killing each other over inebriates, then the Cubans, now the Mexicans? Those minorities sure are dangerous, aren’t they?
Happily, this Scarface remake is being produced by Martin Bregman, who also did the 1983 DePalma film we all know and love. So there’s at least some carry-over talent here. No word yet on who will be the big guy himself, or his girl, but it’s going to be hard to top Pacino and Michelle Pfeiffer. We’ll just have to wait and see.
As always, we’ll keep an eye on Scarface updates as they happen. If you need a fix before this one hits, check out the 1983 remake or 1932 original. Both are worth it.