Tony Montana

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Antonio "Tony" Montana
Tony Montana in the Final Movie Scene
Portrayed by	Al Pacino
Information
Gender	Male
Date of birth	July 22, 1940 Havana, Cuba
Date of death	December 1, 1983 Miami, Florida, US
Occupation	Drug lord
Family	Gina Montana (sister) Georgina Montana (mother) Joseph Spanich Stokich (father) Manolo "Manny" Ribera (brother-in-law)
Spouse(s)	Elvira Hancock
Nationality	Cuban

Antonio Montana is a fictional Cuban drug lord and is the lead character from the film Scarface. He is portrayed by Al Pacino in the movie and is voiced by André Sogliuzzo in the game.

Overview

In 1980, Cuban President Fidel Castro let the gates open on Mariel Harbor in Cuba allowing thousands of Cubans to emigrate to Florida via boats. Some of these immigrants were criminals or ex-convicts. The opening credits show authentic video news footage during the Mariel Boatlift and of the Cuban immigrants arriving in the United States. It then shows Tony Montana, the protagonist, being questioned by U.S. officials. Tony lies about his life in Cuba, telling them that his entire family is dead and that he was a "Political Refugee". However, because of a tattoo on his left hand which indicated that he was once an assassin, he is not granted a green card.

Tony Montana and Manny Ribera, another main character, are then shipped to "Freedomtown" for one month, a refugee camp that holds Cuban immigrants without green cards. While there, Manny explains to Tony that he knows a man that could get them out of the camp and acquire green cards for them. In return, the man, Frank Lopez, wanted an ex-politician, Emilio Rebenga, who worked for Castro, killed. During a riot, Tony stabbed Rebenga in the confusion.

Tony and Manny are released, and Manny gets them jobs as cooks for a small foodstand. Tony is upset about it. Soon a man named Omar Suarez who worked for Frank Lopez arrives and explains to Tony and Manny that they could make $500 working for Frank Lopez. Tony, however, disagrees and insults Omar, leading to Omar threatening Tony's life. Eventually, Omar explains that Tony could do a cocaine deal for him for $5,000, and Tony accepts.

A few days later, Tony and Manny, along with two other associates from Cuba who spent time in Freedomtown, Angel and Chi Chi, drive to a small hotel in Miami Beach to meet with a man named Hector for the drug deal. Tony meets with Hector, but Hector says he doesn't have the cocaine with him, leading to Tony saying he doesn't have the money. Suddenly, the deal goes bad and Angel and Tony are handcuffed to a shower pole. Hector demands the money, but Tony refuses. Hector then kills Angel with a chainsaw. Manny hears the motor, and bursts through the door with a submachine gun. After a gunfight, Tony, Manny, and Chi Chi escape with the cocaine and the money after killing Hector and his associates. Instead of allowing Omar to take the cocaine to Frank, Tony takes it to Frank personally, already distrustful of Omar. (Whether Omar had planned to have Hector kill Tony, or whether it was just a coincidence that Hector planned to kill his buyers is not revealed in the story) Frank, an affable, gregarious man, takes a liking to Tony immediately, impressed by his sense of humor and bold attitude. While Tony likes Frank, he later points out to Manny that he may be too "soft" to be a major player for long. Tony and Manny end up getting a job under Frank in the drug dealing business. Meanwhile, Tony takes an interest in Frank's girlfriend, Elvira Hancock. Frank takes Tony, Manny and his associates out to the Babylon Nightclub which Frank frequently attends. Although Tony flirts with Elvira, she doesn't show any interest in him.

A few months later, Tony pays a visit to his estranged family's home. It is implied that Tony's father, Cody James Swanson, left the family years ago, but his mother and his younger sister Gina are home. Gina is excited to see Tony (who hasn't seen the family in five years), while his mother isn't as thrilled, aware and ashamed of his criminal history. When he offers his mother $1,000 while claiming he is in charge of an "Anti-Castro" group, his mother angrily rejects the gift. She believes he's become a criminal, and asks him to leave. Tony leaves, but Gina runs after him. He slips her the $1,000 secretly, and tells her to spend it on whatever she wants and to give his mother a little from time to time. It is clear he cares very much about his sister, but as the film progresses it is shown that he is very overprotective of her, bordering on an obsession. Later on, this obsession will play a major role in his downfall.

Some time later, while in Bolivia, Tony and Omar begin discussing business plans with plantation owner and drug kingpin Alejandro Sosa on the behalf of Frank, who couldn't make it down due to a pending criminal trial. Tony begins making major decisions about distribution of the drugs, angering Omar, who believes only Frank has authority to make such decisions. Omar and Tony begin arguing over the matter, while Sosa offers Omar a quick helicopter ride back home to talk over the transaction with Frank. Sosa then orders his enforcer, the Skull, to hang and kill Omar, explaining to Tony that he was a police informant some years back. However, Sosa believes that Tony is trustworthy and makes him one of his business partners, but warns Tony never to cross him. After returning to Florida, Tony comes under heat by Frank, who is angry about what happened to Omar, as well as Tony's new setup with Sosa. Frank warns Tony that Sosa is a backstabber and cannot be trusted. Tony and Frank end their business relationship, while Tony begins making bolder passes at Elvira, one of them right in front of Frank.

At the Babylon Nightclub, Tony is shaken down by a corrupt Miami narcotics detective, Mel Bernstein, who informs him he has evidence linking Tony to the murders of Rebenga and the Colombian drug dealers. Forced to talk with Bernstein, the crooked cop proposes to "tax" Tony on his transactions in return for police protection and information. Bernstein negotiates a large bribe and two first-class airline tickets to London. Tony is convinced Frank sent Bernstein because only Frank would know details about the murders. While talking to Bernstein, Tony is distracted by the sight of his sister Gina dancing with a low-level drug dealer. Tony sees him take her into the men's restroom to make out with her in the stall. Tony beats the man and berates Gina. Gina tells Tony she is old enough to do whatever she wants including going into the men's restroom with a man which prompts Tony to slap her.

While at the Babylon, Tony is nearly killed by two hit men. Tony manages to escape, wounded but alive, and is convinced that Frank is responsible for the hit. Tony instructs two of his men to call Frank at exactly 3 a.m. at his office with the words: "We fucked up. He got away." Tony and Manny track Frank down to his car dealership, and find Frank in the middle of a meeting with Bernstein. Tony tricks Frank into confirming he was behind the attempted hit. Admitting what he did, Frank then begs for mercy at Tony's feet even offering $10,000,000 to him. Manny kills Frank on Tony's order, and Tony kills Bernstein. Afterward, Tony goes to Elvira's house, telling her that Frank is dead and that he wants to be with her. Stepping out onto Elvira's balcony, Tony looks into the sky and sees a blimp with the words "The World Is Yours."

All seems to be going well for Tony. He makes $75,000,000 off of 2,000 kilos of cocaine and is soon making 10-15 million dollars a month in profits from his business arrangement with Sosa. He marries Elvira and takes over Frank's empire. He purchases a huge mansion, complete with luxury items, a tiger, as well as surveillance camera monitors. He makes Manny his second-in-command and in charge of security at his warehouses and mansion. However, cracks in Tony's "perfect life" begin to form as both he and Elvira become heavily addicted to cocaine. He becomes more paranoid and distrusting of those around him, and she becomes bored and distant. Tony becomes greedy and stingy with his wealth, while the bank that launders his illegal money wants higher fees to continue the laundering scheme. Manny and Gina begin dating behind Tony's back, afraid of what his reaction would be if he found out.

Tony is arrested for laundering 1.3 million dollars and tax evasion by Mel Seidenbaum, a local money launderer who turns out to be an undercover cop. Tony posts bail and is out of jail while awaiting trial. Tony's lawyer tells him that although he can plea-bargain away most of the time Tony faces, he will still end up serving at least three years in prison for evading income taxes.

Sosa, not wanting to lose his main distributor, calls Tony down to Bolivia and asks him for help assassinating a Bolivian anti-government activist who is exposing Sosa's dealings with Bolivian leaders on television. In exchange, Sosa will use his contacts in the US Justice Department to keep Tony out of prison. Tony is reluctant to kill a civilian, but seeing no other options, agrees to the deal. Manny tries to talk Tony out of going to New York, even though Tony doesn't tell him about the hit, because he has a bad feeling.

Soon, Elvira becomes tired of the dealer lifestyle, and leaves Tony after a fight at a restaurant. Afterward, a drugged and drunken Tony starts yelling at the patrons for looking at him in disgust. He tells them they are just as bad as he is, they just hide it better. He feels society needs "bad guys" like him for people to point their finger at and tell themselves he is the bad guy while ignoring their own sins and deeds. After his tirade, Tony storms out of the restaurant with Ernie in tow.

Tony and Alberto, Sosa's best henchman, travel to New York looking for the activist. Alberto plants a bomb under the activist's car, planning to detonate it before he drives to the United Nations Building to give a speech about his activist work. Unfortunately, it is Tony's aversion to harming innocent people, especially children, that undoes him. On the day the assassination is to take place, Tony orders Alberto not to set off the bomb underneath the activist's car once he finds out his wife and children are in the car as well. When Alberto ignores him, Tony grows angry and shoots him in the head.

Tony returns to Florida to find his mother upset over Gina's new attitude, believing Tony corrupted her, and a furious Sosa phones Tony, threatening to kill him for not going through with the plan. Tony goes to find Gina at an unknown mansion, and sees her and Manny together in night robes. Realizing Manny has slept with his sister, he shoots and kills Manny in a cocaine-fueled rage, which he later deeply regrets, before Gina reveals that they had just married and were going to surprise Tony. Tony and his men take a distraught Gina back to his mansion. Meanwhile, a group of gun-toting assassins sent by Sosa surround the mansion. While Tony sits in his office snorting vast quantities of cocaine, the gunmen begin quietly killing Tony's guards outside.

Gina enters Tony's office wielding a gun, mocking the implicitly incestuous motivation for his jealousy of the men in her life before shooting and wounding Tony in the leg. One of the assassins enter the office through the window and kills Gina before being killed by Tony. Robbed of the element of surprise, Sosa's gunmen launch an all-out assault on Tony's mansion as he cradles Gina's body in his arms. Hysterical by the deaths of Gina and Manny, and in a cocaine-fueled rage, Tony bursts from his office with a M16 assault rifle with an M203 grenade launcher attachment and begins shooting wildly at the attacking henchmen, killing dozens of them despite being mortally wounded himself. The carnage continues until the Skull shoots Tony in the back with a sawed-off shotgun. Tony falls from the balcony into a small pool in the lobby below, floating face-down in the water beneath a statue carrying the inscription "The World Is Yours" as the camera pans out over the devastation.

Scarface: The World Is Yours

This section requires expansion.

The video game titled Scarface: The World Is Yours, a quasi-sequel to the film, features an alternate ending and epilogue of sorts to the film. In the opening scene of the game — the original "ending" scene of the movie — Montana detects his would-be assassin and shoots him before escaping his mansion. He then spends the next three months hiding before beginning a quest to rebuild his empire and getting revenge on Sosa.

During this quest for vengeance, Tony has to take down several opportunistic rivals who were eager to take over his empire after the assassination attempt, amongst them Gaspar Gomez, the Diaz brothers, and others seen only briefly in the film.

A brief prequel to the movie occurs as a game tutorial, showing Tony's military service in Cuba in 1976, wearing the uniform of a private in the Cuban Army.

In popular culture

Al Pacino as Tony Montana in a publicity still from Scarface.

• Since the release of Scarface, the Tony Montana character has been widely referenced and parodied in popular culture. In the world of hip hop, particularly gangsta rap, Montana is widely seen as a role model for his "outsider" status, rise from poverty to wealth and power and appetite for violence.
• Since the release of the film, Tony's quote: "Say hello to my little friend" has become one of the most famous movie lines of all time, being used or parodied many times.
• Each DVD release inspired the largely Hispanic population in Hudson County, New Jersey to "camp out" in front of retail stores such as Best Buy in Secaucus, as well as Circuit City in Union City. Both stores indicated record high sales on the release dates.
• In the popular animated series, The Batman, the classic Batman villain The Ventriloquist is featured with a revised design for his puppet. The puppet in the show is dressed in Tony Montana's trademark white suit, rather than a wardrobe reminiscent of Al Capone, which he wore in the original comic books.
• In Hitman: Codename 47, first game of popular Hitman series, a character named Pablo Belisario Ochoa is featured. He is almost entirely based on Tony Montana, having similar appearance and even saying "Hello to my little friend" upon the first encounter with him. Pablo is a Colombian druglord who resides deep in the jungle, protected by his small army and is very strong. Ironically, Tony Montana states in the movie that he dislikes Colombians.
• Lines from the film are also frequently sampled in hip-hop songs. The Houston-based Geto Boys were one of the earliest rap groups to sample the lines and dialogue. During Public Enemy's "Welcome to the Terrordome", Flavor Flav recites several lines from the film. Also on Wu-Tang Clan member, Raekwon's classic debut album Only Built 4 Cuban Linx..., at the intro of the song "Criminology". There are samples of dialog used from the scene where Sosa yells to Tony over the phone "I told you a long time ago you fuckin little monkey not to FUCK ME!". Followed by Tony fumingly yelling back "Hey hey, who the FUCK you think you talkin to huh??!" "Who the fuck you think I am your fuckin dough-boy?" "You wanna go to war?.... Wanna go to war, OK?". Music from the movie has also been sampled in the instrumentals for hip-hop songs such as Mobb Deep's "G.O.D. Pt. III", Esham "Bolivia" and "It's Mine". Nas' "The World is Yours" takes its title from the motto Montana lived by. One hip-hop artist, Brad Jordan (later a member of the Geto Boys) has even gone so far as to name himself Scarface after the film, and another goes by the name Tony Montana. Jay-Z's 1996 debut album, Reasonable Doubt, also features rapper Pain in da Ass performing a monologue of Omar's lines to Montana regarding the deal with the Colombian's on the intro to the song "Can't Knock the Hustle". In A Milli by Lil Wayne he says, "Tony told us this world was ours." which is a reference to the globe above the fountain that says the world is yours. The rap group G-Unit also uses lines from the film in their song "My Buddy". There are also quotations from the song "Love Missile F1-11" by pop group Sigue Sigue Sputnik.
• Various Latin rap artists such as Fat Joe, Big Pun, Cuban Link and The Beatnuts have sampled lines from the movie.
• Sampled in songs by Klashnekoff, a British rap artist.
• Serbian psychobilly musician Toni Montano chose his pseudonym after Tony Montana.
• In the third episode of Code Monkeys, an 8-bit version of Tony Montana is shown, renamed Tony Dakota, and is a drug lord that Dave and Jerry end up owing $30,000.00 to.
• In the movie Reno 911!: Miami there is a character named Ethan, the drug lord who dresses like Tony Montana and pretends to be Cuban.
• Many of the villains from the Grand Theft Auto video and computer game series have been inspired by the bad guys in Scarface, especially in GTA Vice City and Vice City Stories.
• In the song "Weed, Blow, Pills" by Three Six Mafia, "Rappers get so high like they Tony Montana".
• In one episode of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Will orders a pizza and pretends to be Tony Montana.
• In an episode of The Simpsons titled Lisa's Rival, Homer tries to start a sugar business that makes him paranoid to the point where he says, while mimicking Tony Montana, "In America, first you get the sugar,then you get the power, then you get the women..." parodying Tony's money/power/women speech. In another episode, Bart works as a bartender for Fat Tony's mafia front. The FBI is seemingly aware of it as they stake out the Simpsons' house disguised as a Pizza truck (and later a flower truck when marge points out "what company spends days delivering a pizza?") this parodies a suspicious cable truck shown on one of Tony Montana's security monitors when he points out "when does it take 3 days to rig a cable?"
• In an episode of American Dad! when Steve becomes so obssessed over Harry Potter that he is tricked by Roger that saying the drug house down the block is actually Hogwarts, so Steve thinking he is making potions (which is really Cocaine) Roger becomes a drug dealer dressed as Tony Montana. The final scene of the episode is an action sequence in which Roger lands face-first in a large pile of cocaine, becomes adrenaline rushed and kills a large gang of drug dealers inside the Smith's home with twin Uzi's. He pokes fun at the idea that Tony becomes a better shooter while on cocaine, saying "I am amazingly focused right now!!"

References

External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Tony Montana

• Tony Montana at the Internet Movie Database