Old school Chicago

Rating: 10/10 (11 September 2016)

Upon its release a film critic commented that calling The Untouchables the best gangster film since The Godfather II is not saying much as there have been hardly any good gangster films since then.
Brian De Palma known as a visually interesting but flawed director got a rather campy television series and made a bravado film filled with his visual touches inspired by his love of Hitchcock and meshed it with an artful gangster thriller scripted by David Mamet.
Kevin Costner plays the boy scout Elliot Ness in Prohibition era Chicago initially humiliated but after meeting beat cop Malone (Sean Connery) assembles a team of Untouchables to take down Al Capone (Robert De Niro) for tax evasion.
The film looks terrific. De Palma excelled in the art direction, the stage setting, costumes and photography. There is a bombastic and at times cheesy score by Ennio Morricone (just hear those sentimental tunes each time Mrs Ness appears.)
Yet the film hits bulls eye despite some hokiness. De Niro plays Capone as camp and loud. Each appearance is a set piece, whether he holds court with the press, cries at the opera or beats someone with a baseball bat. De Niro apparently had each hair in his head individually plucked in order to have Capone's moon face look.
Sean Connery dominates as the Irish cop Malone teaching the street smarts to the green Ness on how to take down crime 'the Chicago way.' Yet this is a cop with a Scots accent and who can forget the line: 'brings a gun to a knife fight' before being shot a thousand times.
Andy Garcia gives a star making performance as the cool rookie and sharpshooter George Stone and Charles Martin Smith almost steals the film as the meek agent Oscar Wallace whose idea it was to go after Capone for tax fraud.
There are spectacular set pieces such as the homage to Battleship Potemkin with the pram and baby descending down the steps.
The film is a good blend of action, humour and violence that stands up as a classic almost 30 years later. De Palma makes sure that the violence is not as overpowering as in his previous gangster film Scarface. He behaved himself here and this is probably his most accomplished film.
De Palma would once more return to adapt an old television series in the 1990s when he made Mission Impossible a film series that still continues to this day.