Today The Mooch Went All Tony Montana. He Forgot Who He Was Dealing With.

Here’s one for the movie lovers; what killed Tony Montana in Scarface?

His greed? His arrogance? His ego? His lust for power or another man’s wife? His own rampant jealousy and creepy fixation with his own little sister? He was guilty of all of those things for sure, and he was a murderer and all-round monster as well.

But none of that got him killed.

The thing that killed Tony Montana is that he could never quite shake the idea that he was a good man and had stayed a good man.

Every evil thing he did in the course of that movie, and probably in the character’s backstory, he had managed to rationalise away.

The hits in Cuba? There were about living outside of the law, when the law was obviously far more evil and cruel than a mere gangster.

The first hit he did in Miami? “I kill a Communist for fun,” he said, the second time in the movie he’d expressed his sneering hatred for the people who had ruled his home.

Doubtless he thought the guy had it coming.

Remember his attitude when Frank Lopez tried to have him killed?

He did his deals on the side, made money where he could, maybe even skimmed a little off the top and went after the guy’s wife … but he stayed loyal and had never betrayed him?

What? Only someone warped could think that those actions were anything other than disloyalty.

When he went to see his mother he tried to buy her off with the idea that he had done so well that she no longer had to work. She saw through it and refused to take his blood money. She called him a disgrace and said that it was people like him, Cubans like him, who were giving the rest of them a bad name. That was a woman of honour and integrity.

And all the while, he thought he had integrity, and honour.

His deal with Alejandro Sosa made him a rich man. But right from the start he fundamentally misunderstood who and what Sosa was. When Sosa needed a key witness eliminated, he sent his assassin to America to deal with the guy. Tony was asked to look out for him and show him around as he didn’t speak English.

In fact, Tony was to go on the job with him and drive the guy around. The killer, The Shadow, played by the wonderful Mark Margolis, intends to kill the guy using a bomb and Montana’s role is to get him close enough for the remote control detonator to work. The Shadow, who knows exactly who he is and who he works for, has no qualms about killing innocent people in the process … but Tony balks when he realises that a kid will be in the car.

What kills Tony Montana is this idea that in spite of everything that he has done that he is a better man than The Shadow and Lopez and Sosa. That he’s still a good guy. So he shoots the assassin dead instead of allowing him to detonate the bomb and the ensuing argument with Sosa is what leads to the massacre at his mansion which forms the final sequence of the film.

Sosa won’t accept that disrespect. He wanted the guy dead and instead his best man is gone. I don’t know if Tony believes he can bluff or bullshit his way out of that or that he can tell Sosa that he made the decision and that’s that, but it’s readily apparent, as it has been for much of the film, that he doesn’t even know that he’s overmatched and that the guy he thinks is his business partner is on a whole other order of ruthlessness from him.

Tonight, The Mooch is feeling a bit of that heat after forcing his own players to step aside and allow Thistle a goal after one of them, Tillman, had taken advantage of Thistle behaving like sportsmen. In his own desire to play the good guy, he’s forgotten himself. It may have made him feel momentarily good, and set aside some of his self-loathing, but wow.

He doesn’t play in front of fans who appreciate that kind of thing. His dressing room celebrated the goal and then his players were made to stand down. No matter how well intentioned the act – and I applaud him for doing it, not that he had much choice because the firestorm would have raged for a long, long time – he’s caused himself some problems here.

Ibrox social media is enraged by that act, in no small part because they loathe and despise every other club in the country. Ibrox rang to the sound of booing. Booing their own team for an act of sportsmanship forced on them by the guy in the dugout. The players weren’t for doing it, that’s for sure. The manager had to tell them to.

And so apart from problems in the stands, where they now think this guy has shown weakness and might be “too nice” for the job, I think he’s probably got a couple in his own dressing room as well. Tavernier talked about “high standards” and how it was the right thing to do but Tillman scored it, didn’t seem like he had any other thought and McGregor plainly didn’t want to allow the equaliser. There are probably more dissenting voices than just them.

It amazes me that this guy who has acted so outrageously already at Ibrox might have caused himself his first problems trying to do the right thing, but like Tony Montana his sin is not being a good guy but in believing himself to be … that and misunderstanding the people he’s working for. They aren’t the kind, generous or forgiving sort.

All they know how to do is hate … and a lot of them hated that today alright.