Here’s a revised movie treatment for SCARFACE II: LIBERTAD, incorporating the octopus scene and the falling apart shoes:
TITLE: SCARFACE II: LIBERTAD LOGLINE: Before he was the King of Miami, young Antonio Montana fights to survive the suffocating grip of Castro’s Cuba, transforming from a street-level hustler into a ruthless survivor destined for exile. GENRE: Crime Drama / Period Thriller SETTING: Havana, Cuba (1978-1980) PREMISE: A prequel to Brian De Palma’s 1983 masterpiece, detailing the origin story of Tony Montana.
THE TONE Gritty, humid, and claustrophobic, but with moments of stark, almost surreal desperation. The vibrant colors of pre-revolution Havana are now muted, peeling, and patched over with utilitarian greys, military olive greens, and the omnipresent red of Communist propaganda. The atmosphere is one of constant surveillance and decay, where a simple meal becomes a luxury, and survival is a daily battle. This film focuses on the psychological toll of scarcity and the slow erosion of a man’s soul under pressure.
THE CHARACTER: ANTONIO MONTANA (Timothée Chalamet) At 21, Antonio is lean, hungry, and possesses a simmering, volcanic rage. He is intelligent but uneducated, burdened by a deep resentment for a system that preaches equality while delivering only privation. He loves his sister Gina fiercely and has a strained, complex relationship with his deeply religious mother. He is not yet “Tony the Gangster”; he is Antonio the survivor, a rat navigating a sinking ship, whose outward swagger masks a core of profound insecurity and a desperate need for more.
TREATMENT OUTLINE
ACT I: THE SQUEEZE
Havana, 1978. The Revolution’s promise has soured into rationing and paranoia.
ANTONIO MONTANA (Chalamet) works a dead-end job on the docks by day, his back aching, his stomach rumbling. By night, he is a small-time jinetero (hustler), navigating the back alleys of Old Havana. He procures things that don’t officially exist: American cigarettes, nylon stockings, penicillin, all bartered or stolen. He operates in the shadows of crumbling colonial grandeur, constantly dodging the CDR (Committees for the Defense of the Revolution)—the omnipresent neighborhood spy network.
His motivation is his family. They live in a cramped tenement. His mother, MAMA MONTANA, prays constantly and begs Antonio to accept their lot. His younger sister, GINA (16), is bright-eyed and stifled by the regime’s restrictions; Antonio vows that one day they will have the world. He buys her a cheap, gaudy necklace he hustled, a small symbol of his promise.
One evening, after a particularly meager day, Antonio manages to get his hands on a small, poached octopus from a fisherman. He brings it home, hoping for a decent meal. As he and his family sit around the worn table, silently eating the tough, rubbery flesh, Antonio tries to force down a piece. The texture, the taste of desperation, chokes him. He looks at his mother and sister, their faces gaunt in the dim light. He can’t stand it. He slams his fist on the table.
“This is all we get? This calamar from the sewage?” he seethes, staring at the tentacles on his plate, a primal disgust in his eyes. “We deserve more! Much more!”
His anger frightens Mama Montana. But Gina looks at him with a flicker of understanding, a shared desire for escape.
Antonio’s ambition, his raw hunger, draws the attention of RAFAEL “EL GATO” MENDEZ, an aging, pre-revolution gangster now running a sophisticated black market ring, largely tolerated by corrupt officials. El Gato sees Antonio’s fearlessness, his innate ability to size up people and situations. He takes Antonio under his wing, showing him the deeper currents of the black market. Antonio learns that power isn’t money in a place where money means little; power is having what others are desperate for.
Antonio quickly rises, moving bigger shipments—stolen beef, gasoline, even forbidden vinyl records. He tastes real money, albeit worthless pesos, but it buys influence and a better life for his family. He can finally buy his mother real medicine, proper shoes for Gina. But Antonio starts to dress with a small, defiant flash, drawing stares. His own shoes, however, are worn to threads. One day, during a tense street deal, as he tries to make a quick escape, the sole of his shoe tears completely away, flapping uselessly. He curses, almost falling, a flash of humiliation and rage across his face. He kicks it off, limping away, vowing to never be so poor again. This incident fuels his desire for “the goods,” for unshakeable material security.
He also attracts the cold, unblinking attention of CAPTAIN VERA SOTO (Ministry of the Interior), a true believer in the Revolution who views men like Antonio as capitalist parasites to be purged.
ACT II: THE SCAR
- The economy worsens. Desperation on the streets hits a fever pitch.
Antonio is now El Gato’s top earner. His arrogance grows, fueled by small victories. He bristles under El Gato’s cautious approach. Antonio wants to move into the most dangerous commodity of all: human beings. He wants to facilitate escape routes to Florida.
El Gato, knowing the ruthlessness of the regime when it comes to “traitors,” forbids it. Antonio, seeing the desperation, ignores him and cuts a side deal with a network of hopeful emigrants to smuggle a dissident professor out of the country.
It’s a trap, set by Captain Soto, aided by a jealous rival within El Gato’s crew. The operation is ambushed in the labyrinthine alleys of Old Havana. In a chaotic shoot-out—Antonio’s first real taste of gun violence—he kills a soldier to escape, the sound of the gun deafening, the smell of blood shocking.
He is eventually hunted down and captured. Captain Soto doesn’t just arrest him; she wants to break him. Antonio is thrown into a brutal political prison, a damp, overcrowded hellhole where food is scarce and hope is a luxury. He endures weeks of solitary confinement and brutal interrogation. Here, the last vestiges of his innocence are stripped away. He realizes that in this world, ideals get you killed. Only ruthlessness survives.
During a prison riot, sparked by a desperate political prisoner, Antonio doesn’t pick a side. He uses the chaos to his advantage, settling scores. He corners the snitch who set him up in the cramped prison yard, silencing him with a rusty shiv. In the ensuing struggle, Antonio receives a nasty knife wound across his face—a deep gash from temple to cheekbone—the origin of his infamous scar. He tastes his own blood, mixes with the grime and fear. He emerges from the ordeal changed: colder, eyes dead, a predator refined by captivity. He is no longer Antonio; he is becoming Tony.
He is released back onto the streets due to overcrowding, but he is now a marked man, known to the authorities as dangerous “anti-social scum.” He wears his scar like a badge, a warning.
ACT III: EL ÉXODO
April 1980. The Peruvian Embassy Crisis erupts, and Fidel Castro, in a stunning move, declares the port of Mariel open for anyone who wishes to leave the “socialist paradise.”
Chaos erupts in Havana. It is Antonio’s only chance. He rushes to El Gato, demanding the money he is owed—and more—to buy passage for his family. El Gato, terrified by the collapsing social order and knowing Antonio is now a magnet for trouble, refuses and pulls a gun. Antonio, without hesitation, doesn’t just kill his mentor; he does it with a chilling efficiency, takes all the cash, and pockets El Gato’s ornate gold watch. The transformation is complete.
Antonio races against time to get Mama and Gina to the port. The streets are bedlam—looting, fighting, families being torn apart. Captain Soto is at the docks, a grim reaper overseeing the chaotic processing, ensuring “upstanding citizens” don’t slip through with the “riffraff.”
Antonio bribes a boat captain to take his mother and sister first, knowing their relatively clean records (compared to his) will get them through faster. He shares a final, intense goodbye with Gina, pressing a wad of cash into her hand and repeating his promise that he is right behind them, his eyes hard but with a flicker of the old love.
As Mama and Gina board a rickety vessel, Soto spots Antonio in the milling crowd, the fresh scar on his face unmistakable. A desperate chase ensues through the crush of thousands of desperate refugees on the pier. Cornered near the treacherous water, Antonio engages in a brutal, visceral fight with Soto. He doesn’t kill her with a gun, but uses the chaos and the churning propellers of a departing boat, drowning her in the filthy harbor water—a final, symbolic rejection of the land that tried to drown him. He watches her struggle, without pity, before her body disappears beneath the waves.
Antonio, bleeding, exhausted, and with a fresh, raw hatred in his heart, forces his way onto one of the last dilapidated shrimp boats leaving the harbor, trampling over others in his desperation.
FINAL IMAGE:
The boat is impossibly crammed with the unwanted of Cuba—criminals, the mentally ill, and political dissidents. Antonio stands at the stern, looking back at the receding coastline of Cuba under a dark, stormy sky. The stench of salt, sweat, and fear hangs heavy.
He has nothing. No money (what he had is gone, used for bribes), no family by his side, just the clothes on his back, the fresh scar on his face, and an inferno in his gut. Yet, as the boat turns toward the open sea and the faint promise of American lights on the distant horizon, a terrifying, hungry smile slowly spreads across his face. It’s not joy, but a grim, resolute ecstasy.
He will never eat octopus again. His shoes will never fall apart again. He will get what is coming to him.
*Cut to Black. Cue the ominous synth baseline.*
