Al Pacino was courageous in playing this role of Tony Montana and using a strong, fake Cuban accent. It paid off for him, as we all know, it was one of his best movie roles ever. He played a poor Cuban who came over to America with nothing, claiming to be a political prisoner, and worked up the cocaine cartels. Loosely based off real events, Scarface is a fictional story of the drug trade in Miami.
A good reference documentary is a doc. called Cocaine Cowboys, which tells stories of and interviews the real kingpins of Miami from the 80's.
The reason this time in Miami was so interesting was because it was raw and insane. As you see in the first scenes of Scarface, Tony Montana goes into the street after almost being chainsawed, and shoots a drug lord right in the head. In front of many citizens.
Scarface is going down as one of the best movies due to its out-of-this-world violence.
