One of my favorite movies and perhaps one of the greatest ones ever made stars the great Al Pacino, its name, Scarface. The plot of this incredible film is about a Cuban refugee named Tony Montana who starts with nothing and becomes one of the most powerful hit men in America. He becomes addicted to cocaine, drinks heavily and has more money than he ultimately knows what to do with. I don't want to ruin the end of the movie but I will say that he goes a little wild on cocaine and has some unwanted visitors enter his property. Al Pacino also stars in some other great movies about organized crime, The Godfather series and Heat, are a couple. If you have seen any of these movies, you"ll know that the main characters are involved in or have made a career in some kind of organized crime. There are three types of criminals featured in these films: the mafia, professional thieves, and hit men. All three of these have a few things in common; they all acquire a lot of money, kill people and constantly avoid the police. I"m going to explain some of the main ways organized crime is run in our country and some things we should do to try and stop it.
One stereotype that needs to be explained first is that the organized crime in America is not run by Italian or Sicilian families who are known as the mafia. The Godfather and its sequels were very stereotypical and painted a picture of very powerful families of Sicilian background that were held together by blood, rich enough to buy anything and anyone and crush all others who got in their way. That made for some great movies but does not represent crime in the real world. There is only one way of describing the mafia and that is it doesn't exist. Instead of Italian criminals being members of the mafia, they are simply described as acting in a "mafioso" fashion, which means being a man of honor or rendering oneself respected. This resulted in people associating Italian-Americans as being members of the "mafia" (Taylor, pg.
