Thomas Butt is a senior writer. An avid film connoisseur, Thomas actively logs his film consumption on Letterboxd and vows to connect with many more cinephiles through the platform. He is immensely ...

Notwithstanding its moralistic add-ons, flagrant comic touches, and dated character types, ‘Scarface’ retains its brute primacy, an explosive sense of oncoming disaster, and inevitable comeuppance.

Death creeps in with the dawn in the expressionistic opening scene of Howard Hawks’s “Scarface” (1932). A streetlamp shines like the moon before going dim as a milkman makes a delivery. A yawning ...