de palma's direction can never grow stale: it's the visual definition in my opinion of panoramic, a real tribute to this vaguest of remakes. oliver stone, on the other hand, i think, has a rather definite tendency to date himself. i don't know if you can blame him for the cheesy music, but the story is very much stuck in its era of drug-built decadence and superficiality, and political cowardice. fortunately, pacino's scarface can never be dated. he's a guy with his own tweaked sense of right and wrong; a murderer who won't let anybody date his sister, a criminal who values loyalty and honesty above all. like all great characters, he has a tragic flaw. without giving anything away, it's that the same courage that puts him on top of his criminal empire alienates him from the kings of the underworld to a fatal degree. this is the real strength of the film, the character of tony montana, but the direction is so smooth, and the action so overwhelming, so mindblowing, and the mood so often dark and disturbed that it's easy to get distracted. the kid with no options becoming a crook to get the world and everything in it may be a reusable theme, but no one will ever do it as well as pacino, de palma, and stone, because no one else could find the psychological depth that they did in the title character, and mask it all in such beautiful carnage. you love the guy, even though he's a vicious monster. great, great movie. 