An Amazing Movie

Rating: 9/10 (29 September 2013)

Brian De Palma's "The Untouchables" is a different kind of movie than I would normally watch but that doesn't mean that I thought that it was a bad movie by any means. In fact I actually thought that it was quite good, the story, granted that was pretty much done for them as it was an event in history, the writing, the acting, and the general take on the situation all made this into a fantastic movie. The story takes place in the early 1930's during the era of US Prohibition while a young agent from the treasury department and his handpicked crew try to take down one of the biggest bootleggers in US history. They experience many trials and tribulations but in the end we all know how it works out since it's most people in the world have learned about the event in history class. For those of you that are worried that this movie will play like some kind of documentary or read like a history book I can tell you that it won't. It is a full movie with real people that you will actually care about and feel much the same that they will at certain times.
Now I also have to take a second out here to say that I don't tend to watch a ton of "older" movies, as I was born in the mid 90's there may be a few generational gaps between what I consider to be a normal in a movie and what was normal around when this movie and others like it were made. For example I was very surprised at the fact that we didn't get into the actual movie until more than two and a half minutes. I didn't really have a problem with that but I found it strange as opposed to the "norm" of a movie starting, or some type of ad starting within the first 15 to 30 seconds of the movie. Again another thing that I noticed but did have bit more of a problem with was that right off the bat we're reading something. Nothing like a few subtitles or a headline on a newspaper just a nice solid two sentences on screen, I don't have a problem with subtitles for a different language or anything like that, but I feel as though the stage could have been set better with maybe a reporter telling us this on a news broadcast, over a radio in the room where we start. Other than that I had no problems really with the movie itself.
*Slight spoilers in the next paragraph*
One of my favorite things about the movie was that almost constant suspense, it didn't even have to be within the current plot line that you were watching because there were so many tangled and weaved together. One more straightforward time was early on in the movie when we're sitting around a huge round table with Al Capone and quite of few of his higher-ups, he is giving a speech and then picks up a baseball bat. Now based off his speech you can tell that something is going to happen and he walks around and around the table until he finds his target, ends his speech, and ends the man who had displeased him. Another element that I liked was was how they occasionally would bring the viewer into the story by playing one of the characters as the camera we saw what they would have been seeing. For one example when the man was going into the home of one of the Untouchables, Jim Malone, we slowly become the would-be murder as he creeps in the window to follow Malone through the house and then as he disappears we become confused much like the man we are shadowing.
De Palma uses more of these elements and many others, to convey the story and the characters emotions in the whole movie. While still being able to give certain light feel to certain parts in conjunction with the darkness of it all. Overall I wouldn't say that this is my favorite movie but I do still think that it is a great movie worth watching.