Critics Scoreboard
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
Average Critic Score:
65
(9 sources)
65
(9 sources)
-
100
Chicago Sun-Times
Scarface is one of those special movies, like "The Godfather," that is willing to take a flawed, evil man and allow him to be human. Read Full Review » -
100
Empire
Perfomances are excellent, and despite its moralistic conclusion, the film has since become de rigueur viewing for crack barons, who know a good shoot-em-up when they see one. Read Full Review » -
100
-
90
The New York Times
Scarface is the most stylish and provocative - and maybe the most vicious - serious film about the American underworld since Francis Ford Coppola's "Godfather." Read Full Review » -
80
Time
It is a serious, often hilarious peek under the rock where nightmares strut in $800 suits and Armageddon lies around the next twist of treason. Read Full Review » -
80
Variety
Scarface is a grandiose modern morality play, excessive, broad and operatic at times. Read Full Review » -
63
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
Scarface is a B- movie with singularly silly psychological pretensions: its neo-primitivism is to the complex moral cosmos of Francis Coppola's "Godfather" saga as Disney is to Dickens. [09 Dec 1983] Read Full Review » -
25
Boston Globe
It plays like a crude "Godfather" parody, the sort that might amuse as a 10-minute sketch on "Saturday Night Live," but curdles and collapses as a 143-minute film. [09 Dec 1983] Read Full Review » -
20
Chicago Reader
Brian De Palma dedicates this 1983 feature to Howard Hawks and Ben Hecht, authors of the 1932 original, though I doubt they would find much honor in his gory inflation of their crisp, 90-minute comic nightmare into a klumbering, self-important, arrhythmic downer of nearly three hours. Read Full Review »
