A slight misfire

Rating: 5/10 (31 July 2004)

The story of Al Capone, his legendary control over the underworld of Chicago in the 1930s, and the policemen who made it their life's mission to have him convicted in court, is one that has been told and retold countless times over. So when it is told again, the new version generally needs to have something to set it apart. The problem with The Untouchables is that it doesn't have a whole lot to set it apart from any mob story, leave alone one based on the life of Al Capone.
In this effort, Capone is played with gutso by Robert De Niro, who seems to be every director's first choice for a mobster film. De Niro plays the legendary figure as a fat, arrogant bastard. Whether this is accurate or not, De Niro plays it so well that it really doesn't matter. It is so easy to believe in his Capone that in a way, it makes the film.
The same cannot be said of Kevin Costner, who gets to play famed lawman Eliot Ness. In 1987, when Costner was a relatively unknown actor, it was a lot easier to believe in this portrayal. But as Costner's projects got grander and grander in scale, a certain kind of trend was noticed. In essence, the manner in which Costner portrayed Eliot Ness was more or less identical to how he has played in every film since. Even The Postman or 3000 Miles To Graceland have him displaying little, if any, variation from his standard stock character. Under these conditions, casting Sean Connery, a veteran of playing every character in such a manner that they cannot be distinguished, seems like an incredibly bad move, even if he raises the acting above the level of a TV drama.
Spare a thought for Andy Garcia and Charles Martin Smith. Their roles are so underdeveloped that they often exist merely to provide an extra gun or some plot movement. Although it is kind of amusing when the accountant starts showing a good dose of the Rambo-syndrome, the next scene when Connery uses a corpse to gain information from one of the few survivors on the mob side shows a kind of energy that, as Ebert so eloquently put it, the rest of the film lacks.
Credit where credit is due. The world of the 1930s is very effectively reproduced here. Even if you've only seen the so-called golden era in photos, it's hard to escape how convincingly it is recreated in each frame of the film. Unfortunately, it makes the general unconvincing nature of the rest of the film all the more difficult to understand. One can't help but ask if anyone's heart was in it.
In all, I am giving The Untouchables a five out of ten. I would have given it a six, but Robert De Niro's set pieces also seem so cut off from the rest of the film that one can't help but wonder if they were put in as an afterthought.