One of the Few Very Good 80s Movies

Rating: 8/10 (14 October 2005)

There's an 80s cult out there -- people who think the decade was great because 1.) that's when they were in their teens or 20s; or 2.) they like 80s music. But the sad truth is, the decade was (with a scant handful of exceptions) one of the lowest periods in the history of film-making. One of the few exceptions is The Untouchables. DePalma has always been an uneven filmmaker who at one time seems to have thought of himself some kind of latter-day Hitchcock; and he made a few great pictures. But in 1987, all of that preteniousness combined with his remarkable technical skills to create a fun, watchable, if often brutal, quasi-historical drama. You can snicker at the sentimentality, the humane-good-guy vs. inhumane-bad-guy dichotomy, but this is the last Hollywood picture I know of where that old formula really works. By the 1990s, sadism and brutality were more to the point; by today's standards, the famous "bat scene" has a lot of fans. I'm no moralist (I'm a huge Polanski fan) but I like to see a movie where morality actually makes the story WORK. As for Costner -- otherwise one of the least inspiring, most annoying actors in the business -- this is the role he was made for: bland, full of pure American "virtue," and therefore totally vulnerable. I can't think of anyone else who could have played Eliot Ness.