Brian De Palma's 'Scarface' opens — defining iconography for late-80s and 90s hip-hop

Why it matters

Brian De Palma's Scarface opened December 9, 1983. Critics were mixed at best. Roger Ebert was one of the few major reviewers who got behind it. The box office was fine, not great. None of that mattered. What mattered was what the film became over the next ten years inside hip-hop, which is: everything. Notorious B.I.G. quotes it. Nas names "The World Is Yours" after the line carved into the blimp at the end. Houston's Scarface takes the character's literal name as his rap name. Mobb Deep cite it. Geto Boys cite it. Every late-80s and 90s gangster-rap visual vocabulary you can think of, the suits and the mansion and the mountain of powder and the bilingual Cuban swagger, runs through Tony Montana first. If you wanted a single film whose iconography did more for one music's image than any other film for any other music, it is probably this one. Pacino didn't know what he was doing. Pacino still might not.