Still hoping to keep everyone from leaving, even though it’s really late and the beer ran out hours ago, Universal recently put Scarface on repeat, announcing another remake of the film that, sure, you may have seen 100 times already, but you simply have to check it out on its kickass new system. Besides, it might order some food, and you don’t want to miss out on that. In the meantime, it’s ordered Chilean filmmaker Pablo Larraín, who most recently directed Gael Garcia Bernal in 2012’s No—coincidentally, the most commonly suggested alternate title for a Scarface remake. Larraín’s aptitude for the job goes even deeper than that, with his 2008 film Tony Manero—about a Santiago man obsessed with dressing up as John Travolta’s Saturday Night Fever character—similarly concerning an attempt to recreate a white-suited guy named “Tony.”
Of course, like Brian De Palma’s film to Howard Hawks’ 1932 original, or the actual thesis of Scarface to the way it’s understood in hip-hop songs, this new Scarface won’t really have anything to do with the saga of Tony Montana. As reported when Donnie Brasco writer Paul Attanasio was brought in to update the screenplay, this film will follow the rise of an all-new immigrant, now confirmed to be a Mexican, as he makes his way through the criminal underworld of L.A. It’s also described as “a more mythic origin story that explores where Tony's physical and emotional wounds come from and how they shaped him as a man.” (“Where’d you get the physical and emotional scar, tough guy? Eatin’ pussy?” a cop will ask, kicking off a long flashback to Scarface’s formative years, in which the criminal underworld eats the pussy of his soul.)
Not surprisingly, The Wrap says it’s Larraín’s “outsider perspective” and inexperience with the Hollywood studio system that first attracted him to a Scarface remake, as those who are a little more wise to these Hollywood streets simply wouldn’t have the balls. But Larraín, he didn’t come to the United States to break his fucking back; his outsider edge means he’s “really connected to the material,” and now he wants Scarface, chico, and everything in it.