It is commonly considered to be one of the greatest gangster films ever made.

Commercially successful yet mixed in terms of critical success on original release, the film has over time gone on to be more positively reviewed with screenwriters and directors such as Martin Scorsese praising the film, as well as making an extensive impact on pop culture with references to it in comic books, video games, hip hop music and television programs. Years later, the film has grown into and is widely loved as a cult classic.

Roger Ebert reviewed the film a four starts out of four and it was included in his list of “Great Movies” with him stating that “De Palma and his writer, Oliver Stone, have created a gallery of specific individuals, and one of his fascinations of the movie is that we aren’t watching crime-movie clichés, we’re watching people who are criminals.” Vincent Canby of The New York Times also praised it stating that “the dominant mood of the film is… bleak and futile: what goes up must always come down. When it comes down in Scarface, the crash is as terrifying as it is vivid and arresting.”

Martin Scorsese is noted on the film’s original release to have presaged the film’s negative reviews, notably stating to film co-star Steven Bauer “You guys are great – but be prepared, because they’re going to hate it in Hollywood… because it’s about them.”

#8 in Entertainment Weekly’s 2003 list of Top 50 Cult Films, #9 in Total Film’s 2009 list of The 30 Greatest Gangster Movies and #284 in Empire Magazine’s 2011 list of Top 500 Films of All Time.

Today, it stands on Rotten Tomatoes at 81% with its critical consensus stating “Director Brian De Palma and star Al Pacino take it to the limit in this stylized, ultra-violent and eminently quotable gangster epic that walks a thin white line between moral drama and celebratory excess”.