Kev the Dev

In Scarface, when Sosa’s enforcer recognizes Omar as an informant, Sosa decides to have him killed. But that’s not the only reason he wants him dead. In fact, Omar might not have even been an informant at all. Oliver Stone’s original screenplay reveals that there is much more going on in this scene than the finished film suggests. To understand why Sosa was so eager to have Omar removed, you first have to understand the precarious situation he is in before Tony and Omar ever arrive in Bolivia. Sosa has invested heavily in an enormous cocaine operation, with multiple refining facilities capable of producing hundreds of kilos of cocaine every month. But that scale creates problems of its own. His workers, security, coca suppliers and political protection all have to be paid for, whether the cocaine sells or not. And Sosa has “no steady market.” Traffickers are buying smaller, irregular quantities, leaving him unable to move his product consistently. As he says in the original screenplay: “Nobody can run a business that way.” What Sosa needs is a regular buyer, and he’s offering a great price: 200 kilos at $7,000 per kilo. To put that into perspective, in early 1980s Miami, a kilo of pure cocaine could sell wholesale for at least $30,000. A deal like that could gross around $15 million per month in today’s dollars. And potentially much more once the cocaine is broken down and sold off in smaller quantities. So the question is: if Sosa’s cocaine is so profitable, why doesn’t he have traffickers from all over the United States lining up to buy from him on a regular basis? The answer is simple, but it’s not really spelled out in the finished film… (1/3)