Gangster Genre Study Journal 

Summary

The plot centers on the rise and fall of Tony Montana.

Tony Montana and his friend Manny arrive in USA and together they work they way up and build a strong drug empire In Miami. Tony has to deal with all the power and ego that comes with being a powerful drug lord.

Beginning 

A man named Tony Montana was in the USA in search of the ‘American Dream’ Montana was detained on suspicion of apolitical criminal when questioned by three tough talking government agents.

To be released after 30 days and to be given a green card, Tony Montana and his friend Manny kill a man during the riot at freedom town. A man named Frank Lopez, a wealthy man who deals in cars and trades in cocaine, ordered the death of the man.

After getting their green cards, Tony Montana and his friend Manny Ray find work as dishwashers in sandwich/taco shop.

one of Lopez men Omar,  the one who contacted Manny for the hit job, offers both Tony and Manny a job to upload marijuana from a boat in Mexco to arrive in Miami the following night for $500 each. Tony turns down the job over the little money they will receive, so Suárez sets him with a new job which Tony and Manny will end up receiving $5,000.

Tony, Manny, set out to meet Hector at a motel in Miami Beach. While Manny and the other guy wait in the car, Tony and one of his boys go up to the hotel room to meet with Hector. The meeting does not go smoothly, as Tony grows irritated with Hector, who is slow to give him the cocaine in exchange for money. Suddenly, Tony and Angel are double-crossed by the Colombian. It turns out that Hector doesn't want to sell Tony the cocaine; he only wants to steal the money Tony  has. To convince Tony to give over the cash, Angel is dismembered in a shower stall with a chainsaw by Hector. After Angel is dead, Hector is about to do the same thing to Tony but ends up getting saved by Manny who also ends up getting shot. Hector escapes but Tony finds him and shoots him dead in the middle of the street. Tony and his boys end up getting both the cocaine and the money before the police arrive. Tony then impresses the money's owner, Lopez  with both the return of  the money and cocaine. Frank immediately hires Tony and Manny and that night Tony also meets Lopez's lady, the beautiful Elvira who he ends up like instantly Taking Tony and Manny out to a local nightclub  where Frank spends most of his night times; Tony and Manny  see how the other side lives and which is where Montana begins his rise to the top of the Miami cocaine underworld.


Middle 
Three months later, Tony Montana tries to make amends to his family. Tony's father left when he was little and since then, his mother and younger sister Gina  have been living in Miami for the past several years. Tony shows up at his mother's and Gina's house one evening,and offers them $1,000 in cash for financial support. Gina is overjoyed to see her older brother whom they have not seen for five years. But Tony's mother wasn't as easy to win over as the sister she was upset that her son turn his back on a real honest to life jobs and went for the quick and easy life of crime, and even thought he just came back home after being gone for so long, she wants nothing to do with Tony, and she is too full of pride to accept his money despite needing it But Gina, who loves he brother, walks him outside and he slips her the money, Gina unlike her mother wants the life that her brother has and right away we can see how Tony's love for his sister and how genuine it is and we also see that he is very protective when Manny makes comment about how beautiful Gina is and Tony gets angry and warns him off.

Months later, while on business for Omar set up a new deal for Lopez. Tony feels that Frank has gone soft and begins to negotiating with Alejandro, who is a powerful drug lord. Alejandro finds out that Omar is an informant for the police and has him killed to show Tony how he deals with those that are disloyal to him
Alejandro agrees to bring Tony on board with him as a distributor for cocaine. But  Alejandro warns Tony to never betray or double cross him in any way. Tony and Frank have a disagreement when Frank accuses him of stealing and feeling insulted leave Lopez to strike out on his own. feeling like his the relationship between him and frank was over. he went to Elvira and made a marriage proposal, Lopez not too happy tries to takes out Tony.

At a nightclub, a Miami Detective proposes to tax Tony on his transactions in return for a police protection and information but just then Tony sees him his sister Gina dancing with a drug dealer, he follows the two of to the bathroom, where he shouts at Gina for what is she doing. Manny takes her home and outside her house Gina admits she is attracted to Manny but Manny warns her off because of Tony. At the nightclub Tony is attacked by two gunmen but he kills the men and escapes, suspecting it was Frank that sent the men, Tony asks one of his men to call frank's office at 3:00, after the phone rings at 3:00 Frank confirms his involvement by playing the phone calling off as Elvira, Frank begs for Tony's forgiveness before Manny shots him.

Tony begins his profitable relationship with Alejandro, marries Elvira, buys a new mansion complete with surveillance cameras and numerous luxury items, and Tony even sets Gina up in business with her own beauty salon. Manny and Gina soon begin a romantic relationship, but they keep it secret from Tony who had firmly stated to Gina that he does not want her dating anybody. But as Tony's business grows, so does his cocaine addiction and paranoia, and he begins to spiral out of control... the beginning of the end. His wife, who becomes further addicted to cocaine, becomes bored and emotionally distant.

End 
Tony marriage ends when she leaves him and he send send on a job to kill a man and he couldnt do it because of the man's family. coming back home, he finds out that his sister Gina and his right hand man Manny are missing. After getting Gina's home address from Mrs. Montana, who doesn't know who else lives there, Tony goes to the house in nearby Palm Grove. Much to Tony's surprise, Manny unexpectedly opens the door. Tony then sees Gina in a night gown at the top of the stairs. Enraged that another man has obviously slept with his sister, Tony shoots Manny dead. Hysterical, Gina reveals to Tony that they had just been married and were going to surprise him. Tony has Gina taken back to his mansion where all hell is about to break loose.
In revenge for Tony's failure to kill the journalist, who has now exposed Sosa and his partners to the world as drug lords, Sosa sends a swarm of assassins to Tony's mansion to kill him. Sitting at his desk snorting from an enormous pile of cocaine, Tony realizes and regrets what he has done to his best friend. When Tony is contemplating this, Sosa's army of assassins have breached the main gate at Tony's estate and have quietly begin to kill all the guards around the mansion. At the same time, a distraught Gina enters Tony's office armed with a pistol to confront him with the truth about his feelings for her. She now realizes that Tony loves her in an unnatural way and demands, at gun point, that he make love to her. She begins to shoot at him while demanding he take her.
As all his men are being killed, Tony, still delirious from the cocaine, leans over Gina's dead body begging for forgiveness, at the same time the hit men break into the mansion, Chi Chi opens fire with an Uzi as he falls back and ends up banging on the door to Tony's office (it has been locked from the inside by Gina who was planning to kill Tony). Unfortunately, Tony does not seem to hear him. Chi Chi is shot in the back and Tony sees it on the security cameras.
As the hit men prepare to storm his office, Tony finally snaps out of his drug-induced stance, arms himself with an M16 rifle with an under mounted M203 grenade launcher and blows down the door. A huge climatic gun battle begins as Tony takes position atop the grand staircase and guns down dozens of Sosa's men who try to storm the balcony. Tony is hit a number of times by return fire, but he keeps shooting. With most of Sosa's men dead, Tony, strung-out on drugs, defiantly yells out at the assassins, not realizing that The Skull, Sosa's chief assassin and leader of the assassination battalion, had sneaked into the room behind him. The Skull shoots Tony in the back with a 12-Gauge shotgun. Tony falls off the balcony and into a reflecting pool at the base of the grand staircase. In the final shot, as the Skull and the few surviving assassins look on, Tony Montana lies dead... face down in the reflecting pool which is located below a large brass globe that says: THE WORLD IS YOURS.

The film Scarface doesn't have different story line, which makes it a single strand film. the key story line was about the protagonist and his hungry for power and how he used that hungry to rise to the top of power chain and how he gets consumed by it all. the film is alternative, after watching the film i would say that it is alternative because all of the events in the film go in order. we see Tony Montana rise to power and at the end we see his down fall. Enigma rises during and at the end of the film because you end up having questions that were not answered in the film and even after the film is finished the unanswered questions still continue to bug you. for example: 
Would Tony still have died if he had Manny fighting by his side? 
Where is Elvira? 
Will the money she inherits from Tony condemn her to the same faith? 
How would Tony's mother feel finding out that both of her kids are dead? 
If Tony didn't rise to all that power or he didn't use drugs would he let his friend live?

There were couple of equilibrium that got in Tony Montana's way that would have stopped him from meeting his goal and one of these things was Frank, Frank and Tony were friends but they ended up turning on each when Frank tried to kill Tony, that was the first equilibrium, the second was when Tony got caught counting money by the police but he found a way to over all of these equilibrium and meet his aim. 


there was many climax involve in the film one of them being when Tony and his boys were doing a job and their got double crossed and one of Tony's guys just got dismembered and the same thing was about to happen to him. 
another climax moment that created a suspense was when Tony just killed his friend and Alejandro send a lot of men to kill him and he was just in his office getting high on his drugs and men were climbing up to his house trying to get in but all of his camera and he didn't notice anything, i think that moment that a lot of suspense and climax.

Genre
Scarface was a gangster and there are a lot of things used in film that would make it stand out like a gangster.
one way being convention.  the are a lot of convention used in the film that would convey that it is a gangster film.
the conventions used in gangster are mainly violence, crime. drugs, love interest.

 Violence: as soon as the film starts Tony kills someone, then there is a gun fight and Tony's friend dies and Tony kills the person who killed his friend. the film involves a lot of violence.

Crime: at beginning  of  the film, Tony is at a police station getting questions and because the film just started we don't know what he may or may not have done so 5 Minutes in film he is killing someone and then he is trading money. *killer. ....*drug lord

Drugs: at the beginning Tony didn't seem to be into drugs that much but others around him used to take it mostly Frank and Elvira but he used to deal drugs and at the end he started using himself  to the point when his whole face was in a lot coke.

Love interest: in the film was Elvira, who was with Frank first but ended getting won over by Tony and finally marrying her.

One of those or more thing are normally involved in gangster and scarface was no different.  there was a lot of violence and blood involves in this film.

One Convention that is normally used for Italian Mafia movies are suits. In Scarface suits was worn by all of the characters and the beginning when Tony was poor he wasn't wearing a suit but as he worked his way up and gained money, the more expensive his clothes have gotten, he switched to suits like all of the rich man in the film. 

Visual 
there are a lot things in the film that would hint to the audience what type of film it is visually. At the start we see Tony use a knife to kill a guy. there are a lot guns thought the whole movies where people where getting shot at or killed with, a chainsaw was used to dismember a guy. 
there more conventional things to used visual is somewhere in the middle of the film when Tony rises to power and his big mansion, expensive suits, drugs and money. these are the visual that make it a gangster film.

Symbolic
the symbolic moment that happened in the film was when Tony got shot from behind and he fall into his pool and behind his dead body was ball that spins with the worlds 'the world is yours' this is symbolic and kind of ironic because he brought it when he got all of his power and that quote was something he said before. what makes it ironic is that he got it when he brought the mansion and everything else and now it was at the button with all. this is symbolic because we see how the world that he wanted along and consumed him, he had everything he wanted, the women, money, house but he still wasn't happy.
i think Tony had to died like that because if he lived it would sent out the wrong type of message and that message would be that you can do bad things, end up where you want and still live. Tony dying sent out the message that your crimes will catch up too you and that it doesn't matter if you think the world is yours, it will belong to another guy the next day.

Representation: How are men/women portrayed?

The key characters in film are Tony Montana, Manny Ribera, Elvira Hancock and Gina Montana.The way the characters are portrayed is both positive and negative but the way in the film women are representation is different to the way men are represented.

There are three main women in the film.

Gina, Montana.
Gina Montana is first introduced to the audiences when her brother comes over and the way she is first portrayed is like a typical little sister who loves and looks up too her big brother, she is first portrayed in a positive way as sweet girl.
when we see her at club about to go to a bathroom with a gut, she is portrayed in a negative. in a way it shows that she is growing from the girl we first saw to the kind of girl she is now. Gina says that she likes the guy she is with but her older brother isn't listening, which might explain her acting out but it could also mean that she needs a role model since her father left when she was young and her brother was missing from her life for 5 years.

Elvira
the first time we see Elvira she is in a lift coming down and we see her wearing a blue long elegant dress, throughout the film we see her wearing dresses that show of her asserts, i think this is meant to make her seem sexy and desirable which works for Tony because the first time that he saw her he seemed shocked and the way he was looking at her showed that he was interested instantly, i also think that she is represented as a sex object, anchorage to her clothing and her appearance. The women in Scarface are represented below men.

Mama Montana
Mama Montana is the only women that is represented as a strong and independent women, she doesn't want anything to do with her son and the way he lives his life and she portrayed as normal mother who is wants whats best for her children, like the way she wants Tony to get out of out the crime life and she works hard to give her daughter Gina what ever she wants. she is portrayed in a positive because she takes care of herself and works for herself


Tony Montana 
Tony is represented as the main character the person who the whole story is based on, who is strong and he is loyal and hates disloyal for example when Frank double crossed Tony, he ended up dying. sometimes Tony is portrayed as hard, brutal man, but sometimes Tony is portrayed as kind man who loves his family who is protective, this is pointed out throughout the film when we see his relationship with Gina, we see how much he cares and loves her and how he wants her to stay that way, i think the reason he is so over protective is because she is the only good thing in his life and he wants her to stay that way, this might what led him to kill his best friend and he also has caring side for  kids, which is why he got upset when his wife couldn't give him kids.
Tony Montana is also known for being able to keep his word in the film he says 'all i have in this world are my balls and my word and i don't break them for no one'  this shows us as the audience how much means what he is saying.


Manny 
 Manny one of the main character is his is close friends with Tony Montana, Manny is portrayed as kind of a ladies man who is not very good at picking them up, while Tony Montana was busy with trying to get money and power, Manny was busy trying to chat up women, his motivation was mostly sex.
Manny is also shown to be a very loyal friend to Tony, at the beginning of the when Tony was poor and trying to find a way to get out of the town he was in, it was Manny who found the solution to the problem even though it involved killing a guy, he is always there for his best friend. for example: when Tony rise to his power, Manny is still looking out for him, when Tony and his sister Gina had a fight and he took her home and when she told him she liked him, he dismissed her because Tony warned him off, he was the perfect friend which made it even sadder when he died.

Target Audience
i think the target audience are young males in the age range of 18-30. the film is rated an 18 so obviously the target audience cannot be anyone below this age. there are some very adult subjects in this film, such as murder and drugs. scarface is a very typical male film. scarface is saying that everything comes at a price, especially greed and a thirst for wealth.
The ethnicity and nationality doesn't seem to matter for this film.

Violence 
Scarface is full of strong violent scenes. i think the death that had a big effect on me was the scene with the chainsaw, a lot of film use chainsaws, but i really like the use of climax this scene created. this scene was full of violence but it was great scene. what i liked about this scene is Tony was double crossed and he doesn't like being double crossed and i like the fact that he killed the guy that killed his friend in the middle of the street.

the last scene where Tony died, it involved so much gun fight and violence. The way he died was very effective and i though it was a great way to end the film because it shows that no matter how high you think your up, your fall will always come. it was a good ending because giving it a good ending would have sent the wrong message.