still at the top of my De Palma list; stellar cast with a tight ball of a script

Rating: 10/10 (3 April 2006)

Among the top five films of 1987, and filmmaker Brian De Palma's career, is the Untouchables, a firecracker kind of Hollywood film that gives the story of Elliot Ness versus Al Capone some great panache. And it's the kind of great film that is so only through the combined efforts of everybody, not just De Palma, even as it is his vision (sometimes playfully homage-like, as I'll mention in a moment), but his cast, crew, and the script by David Mamet.
The cast here includes Kevin Costner, in one of his three or four passably good performances, in the Ness part (like his later Jim Garrison role, the confident if a bit conflicted hero); De Niro in a ham-bone best as Capone, with one of the more eye-opening and funny scenes he's ever done (eg with a bat); Charles Martin Smith and Andy Garcia in juicy supporting roles. And then one comes to Sean Connery, in his deserved Oscar winning turn as Irish cop turned Ness partner Jim Malone, who has the toughest words and the biggest guts of the group. It's in his work here, where he has some of that confidence of past performances into a very real character that makes it quite a piece. Aside from the sheer presence of a star like Connery on screen, there's some depth he gives to the character too, just as De Niro does with his choices as an actor (even if his role is the larger-than-life one).
De Palma, at his disposal as a craftsman, has good editors and camera people working alongside him, as well as Ennio Morricone on music (a small 'yey' emits from my mind). Through them his film is a slick, but not overbearingly at all, kind of 1930's Hollywood picture, with a story of the cops versus robbers, in some unconventional circumstances. The centerpiece of the climax, De Palma's homage to Eistenstein's Battleship Potemkin, is operatic and grandiose and puts the drama of what was in real life likely quite different into a spectacular sequence, is as entertaining as it could be. While it's not the only action sequence in the film, one could point to just that one sequence as being a true highlight of doing homage well. In truth it's been a little while since I've seen the Untouchables, and maybe even longer since I've seen it from start to finish (and, unfortunately, never on a big screen). But I wouldn't dare to tell you not to watch it if you haven't yet.