(This is a continuation of this post.)
7. Tony Montana
Appearances: Scarface
Created By: Oliver Stone
Portrayed By: Al Pacino
Real Name: Antonio Montana
Occupation: Former assassin, former sandwich maker, drug kingpin
No-Kill Policy?: Nope. Just don’t ask him to kill kids.
A cautionary tale for anybody planning to start a drug empire, Cuban ex-pat Tony Montana was one of 125 000 Cuban refugees who arrived in Miami during the infamous Mariel Boatlift (During which not only refugees who wanted to leave Cuba, but also hardened criminals were allowed to leave Cuba for Miami). He is sent to a refugee camp, but is released into Miami, Green Card in hand, after assassinating a former Cuban government official for Miami drug lord Frank Lopez. The ambitious and ruthless Montana then begins a crime spree that will take him to the top of the Miami food chain (Of cocaine!)
At the bottom of the food chain? The cock-a-roaches, of course.
Al Pacino’s wonderful performance just elevated the audience’s enjoyment of the coke-addicted kingpin.With Pacino’s almost cartoonish Cuban accent, everything is just so damn QUOTABLE. Seriously, watch any fifteen minutes of Scarface and you’ll come away with whole paragraphs of the most wonderful dialogue. The movie may be almost three hours long, but just watching Tony Montana go about his antics is totally worth it, so much that even though he is a terrible human being, you end up rooting for him right until he ends up floating face-down in front of his “The World of Yours” statue.
6. Tyler Durden
Appearance: Fight Club
Created By: Chuck Palahniuk
Portrayed By: Brad Pitt
Real Name: N/A
Occupation: Waiter, Soap maker, camera-man, revolutionary
Fight Club has been possibly the biggest mindfuck of a movie that I have ever seen. Off the top of my head, the only other movies that even come close to equaling the shock I felt while watching were The Sixth Sense and maybe Shutter Island, although the latter twist ending felt like more of a cop out, but I digress.
In Fight Club, a depressed, unmotivated and unnamed narrator (Played by Edward Norton) becomes incredibly bored with his yuppie, white-collar lifestyle. However, that all changes when he meets Tyler Durden, an incredibly charismatic, yet eccentric gutter punk who works several jobs, harming customers and sabotaging the various industries he works in. The two move in together and start a “Fight Club”, where ordinary, dissatisfied men got together to beat the shit out of each other, and occasionally commit sabotage against corporations and consumer society in general.
And sell… let’s call it “All-Organic” soap.
Tyler Durden may be insane, but he speaks a lot of truth. The extremely drastic lengths that he goes to to ensure that society are really not so much to hurt people, but to make people see how weak they have become thanks to the rampant commercialism that we see every day, and the consumer society that we have willfully lulled ourselves into becoming. He’s still crazy, obviously, but the best antagonists are the ones that we sort of agree with, and Tyler is no exception.
I should have more posts up soon, since I’m on Christmas Break right now and want to get back into blogging regularly. It’s amazing how much time a part-time job takes up.
Please Kill the Messenger 