The Untouchables

Brian De Palma's "re-imagining" of the '50s TV series is a cartoonish cops-and-robbers fantasy that works like a charm. The Untouchables (1987) reduces Elliot Ness's struggle against Al Capone to a stylish shoot-'em-up with no pretense to seriousness, resulting in a fun if frivolous film.

Bootlegger Al Capone (Robert De Niro) rules 1930s Chicago with an iron fist, bribing cops and officials and killing rival gangsters with impunity. Treasury Agent Elliot Ness (Kevin Costner) arrives with a mandate to shut down Capone's operation, but is stymied by crooked cops and a hostile press. Ness assembles a crack team of clean cops - street-smart veteran Jim Malone (Sean Connery), sharpshooting cadet George Stone (Andy Garcia) and nebbish Treasury officer Oscar Wallace (Charles Martin Smith) - to take Capone down "the Chicago way."

As high art, The Untouchables doesn't make the grade. Historically the film is a complete joke, but that's the least of its problems. David Mamet's script is awkwardly-plotted and crammed with cliches, and a heaping helping of cornball "humor" doesn't help ("He's in the car," Ness says of a gangster he pushed off a roof. Ha ha). There's an awkwardness in tone, with the humor and black-and-white morality clashing with the gory violence and salty language. More troublesome are basic credibility issues: one character, shot with half a Tommy-gun magazine, lives long enough to drag himself through his apartment and impart a dying message, and Capone's lawyer makes a trial maneuver I doubt is legal in North Korea.

As entertainment, though, The Untouchables works pretty well, and it's easy to see why I loved this film at age 13. The pace is brisk, the characters likeable and the stylish, creatively-staged action scenes redeem any flaws in story structure. The highpoint is unquestionably the shootout in Union Station, an extended homage to Battleship Potemkin, as Ness tries to capture a Capone henchman (Jack Kehoe), shoot his way through a half-dozen bodyguards and rescue a baby carriage rolling down the stairs. This hypnotic scene, filmed in slow-motion with a moody Ennio Morricone track thumping in the background, is remarkable, though it makes the final twenty minutes a big anti-climax.

With De Palma's assured direction, the film is enjoyably slick and stylish. Everything's probably too neat and tidy for '30s Chicago, but the impeccable art direction and Stephen Burum's photography sure is pretty. De Palma crams the film with references to source films as diverse as Potemkin and Charade with typical "Movie Brat" insousciance. Ennio Morricone contributes an atypically jazzy score, with heavy use of sax, clarinets and pulsing percussion.

Kevin Costner is well-cast in a fairly boring role. Ness is a complete goody two-shoes throughout - his scene yelling at a recently-deceased gangster is laughably bad - and his transition to hardboiled, amoral cop is hard to buy. Sean Connery got an Oscar for his Malone, tackling a stock "grizzled mentor" role with aplomb. Robert De Niro's turn as Capone amounts to an extended cameo, a series of monologues and rants separate from the main narrative. Billy Drago's ghoulish Nitti makes a far more intimidating villain. Patricia Clarkson (The Dead Pool) gets a few nice scenes as Ness's wife. Andy Garcia and Charles Martin Smith (Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid) have little to do, and Richard Bradford's (The Chase) police chief is the broadest Oirish stereotype you'll see outside of The Quiet Man.

The Untouchables isn't a patch on truly great gangster films like The Godfather and Once Upon a Time in America, but it wasn't trying to be. It's a fun, silly action film and it's hard to fault it much on that score.