So long Mel. Have a good trip.
Who cleaned up after Tony killed Mel and Frank? Nick?
They just leave leaving Nick alone. I guess Nick then drags the bodies out to the car and dumps them in the river?
Nick just got a job from Tony. This was probably his first task to perform.
What a great scene before that.
"You can't kill a cop!
"'oo ever said choo wasss one?"
And Mel went out a badass.
"...have a nice trip."
"F --you!"
Bang.
PS. What I like about this whole part of the movie is how Tony maneuvers Frank into setting up his OWN death. Tony maintains loyalty(and he IS loyal, even as he is talking directly to Sosa), keeps pushing Frank on both the job front and the girlfriend front (Tony wants what Frank's got)...until Frank finally orders the hit on Tony and thus Tony has now been "betrayed" by Frank..and can kill him with impunity (well, the other guy does the hit, another great bit -- "I'm not gonna kill you, Frank....hey...shoot this piece of chit.")
The only issue is that Tony went after Frank's lady. That's a no-go, and Lopez was in the right. Lopez had it all right. He never went for too much, and it was only Tony who could have done him in, all because of the lady that Tony was taking from Frank.
shareAs Jack Nicholson's Joker said to Jack Palance's mob boss:
"You set me up...over a WOMAN!"
It all ended being up rather pointless. I get so angry at Tony in the scene where Elvira says she wants to have sex with him and he instead wants to watch the stupid news program instead. She's a good looking woman played by Michelle Pfeifer who is such a beautiful woman and he just sits on his butt watching TV! What an idiot! I admit I just saw this for the first time recently and didn't care for it that much. I know he's not supposed to be likable but he isn't fun to watch. Every scene just makes me crave more and more for the ending where he is shot to death. Then I yell out, "Good riddance!"
I get that the director probably intended this as showing how a life of crime isn't fulfilling but it's just not my cup of tea. I don't watch mob movies much except for Goodfellas which I only really like because of the chemistry between Ray Liotta, Joe Pesci, and Robert DeNero.
i saw it when it first came out, and at the time I thought it was super-intense.
That may have been because I got myself all coked up for the occasion.
I've watched it several times since then, and now I don't find it nearly as good.
The ending has no credibility at all and was a mistake.
But, to your point, it's been a while since I last watched it, but at that point I think it was showing that 'success' was turning out to be a grind for Tony, and where he was once obsessed with Elvira's presence, she is just something else he obtained/attained--his values have changed at this point. And again, as it's been a while, I don't remember the timeline all that accurately. But there was a point at which Tony was getting high on his own supply. If he was at that point in his career at the time of the scene you are referring to, this would have had an effect on his libido and his attention span.
In retrospect, I still see some of Pacino's work in this as pretty good, and some of the scenes as pretty good, but this is not up there with the better movies for Al Pacino (at least in my mind).
"I get that the director probably intended this as showing how a life of crime isn't fulfilling but it's just not my cup of tea. I don't watch mob movies much except for Goodfellas which I only really like because of the chemistry between Ray Liotta, Joe Pesci, and Robert DeNero."
Well, Scarface came out in the early 80s, and Coppola had had all that success with The Godfather about 10 years prior, and at the time I think I kind of saw this as Depalma's Godfather. I don't know that it was intended to portray a life of crime in a certain way, maybe, I just thought it was supposed to grip people with the intense violence (and of course a story line had to be part of it). Like Goodfellas (and The Godfather) it was based on historical events that took place at a certain time. I agree with you that Goodfellas is way better. The casting was superb, and their acting was great. And they didn't screw it up with an unbelievable shoot out at the end. Everything in Goodfellas was believable.
And I never like Miami Vice at all, but except for the graphic depiction of violence (with language) it seemed as if it (Miami Vice) was supposed to project that Scarface vibe.
Tony was ambitious and not a nice guy.
However, he did seem to think of himself as a straight shooter (with no pun intended).