The Untouchables

The Untouchables; crime, USA, 1987; D: Brian De Palma, S: Kevin Costner, Sean Connery, Robert De Niro, Andy Garcia, Charles Martin Smith, Richard Bradford, Jack Kehoe, Brad Sullivan, Patricia Clarkson

Chicago during the Great Depression. The Prohibition is still enforced by the government, but gangster Al Capone is still making a fortune by smuggling and selling alcohol. Then the Prohibition agent Eliot Ness shows up and declares in the news that he will defeat and arrest Capone. But he immediately experiences a setback when he makes a raid in a warehouse, yet doesn't find any alcohol: obviously, the corruption is present even in the police rows. But then he meets the old police officer Malone who advises him to use dirty methods. Together with two other men, they foil every shipment meant to Capone. But then the gangsters kill Malone and Capone hires a bribed jury at his trial for tax evasion. Ness replaces the jury and puts Capone behind bars.

The producers risked a lot when they invested additional money in the crime film "The Untouchables", based on Eliot Ness's autobiographical account of capturing Al Capone, but it turned out to be an excellent movie that was a huge box office hit, Brian De Palma's most commercial one aside from "Mission: Impossible", and which established Kevin Costner as the new movie star. "The Untouchables" are at moments truly untouchable, an idealistically constructed crime film of classic good-old-school filmmaking in which four unknown policemen are fighting against the strong gangster guerilla-style, filled with tight, realistic details and minimalistic mannerisms from De Palma's side. Sean Connery didn't achieve some sort of an outstanding role as Malone (the neatest scene is when he shoots at a fugitive criminal because he can't run anymore), yet he is still charismatic and subtle in the role, augmented by delicious dialogues by David Mamet. In one sequence, after a shootout in a cottage at the US-Canadian border where the gangsters tried to smuggle alcohol, Malone looks at the dead gangster and says: "He's as dead as Julius Caesar!" Later on, to intimidate a captured gangster, Malone takes the dead one and pretends he is interrogating him outside, playing "bad cop", counting to three and then shooting the head of the corpse, causing the living gangster sitting in the cottage to confess everything. The dialogue between Malone and Ness in the church is also genius: "What are you prepared to do?" - "Anything within the law." - "And *then* what are you prepared to do?" Robert De Niro is slightly miscast as Capone, since he doesn't look like him at all, but De Palma enriches the story with long juicy Steadicam shots, unusual camera angles (the opening shot) and crystal-clear cinematography, while the best action sequence is the one at the stairs when the gangsters shoot at Ness who tries to catch a baby carriage, which is a great bow to Eisenstein's famous Odesa sequence from "Battleship Potemkin", showing that the authors were very literate and passionate during their craftsmanship.

Grade:+++