Sean Connery Wins The Oscar, And Kevin Costner Takes A Huge Step Towards Being A Superstar

Rating: 9/10 (11 August 2016)

Continuing my plan to watch every Kevin Costner movie in order, I come to The Untouchables
Plot In A Paragraph: Federal Agent Eliot Ness (KC) sets out to stop Al Capone (Robert De Niro) and he assembles a small hand-picked team who can not be bought.
OK, I'll get it out if the way straight away, it's historically inaccurate, but what it does have, is great direction, great performances, great sets, great costumes, a great score and a great screenplay. The screenplay by David Mammet has it all!! Good guys, bad guys, a fast moving plot, some good dialogue, the occasional bit of humour and sickening tragedy. OK, it's more style over depth, but that's not a problem for me.
In 1987, KC was still relatively unknown. He may have had a semi-recognizable face (if only for Silverado), going into this film, but this was the role that propelled him to stardom. It's not a great performance from KC, but is perfect for straight arrow, family man Elliot Ness. He is not meant to be an over the top action hero, and had he gave a more energetic performance (like he gave in Fandango and Silverado) it might have ruined things.
De Niro is a larger than life Al Capone, Andy Garcia and Charles Martin Smith both offer solid support as does Billy Drago, but the movies best performance belongs to Sean Connery as Malone, a man who always has a one sentence rule/quote for every occasion.
When Connery won his Oscar, many critics saw it as a "lifetime achievement" award (like Al Pacino's Oscar for Scent Of A Woman). I think this is grossly unfair on his performance here, which I do believe is award worthy in its own right.
One of my few problems with the movie is following on from a characters death (no spoilers even though it is 29 years old) the violent shoot out at the train station, then the Ness V Nitti confrontation, the ending feels a little flat, but that's probably just me.
With a $67 million domestic gross, KC had the biggest hit of his career, so far, as The Untouchables ended the year the 6th highest grossing movie of 1987. Grossing more than movies like Predator, Lethal Weapon, Dirty Dancing, Wall Street and the James Bond movie The Living Daylights.
I almost gave it a 10/10