Nearly Unwatchable

Rating: 4/10 (3 January 2012)

From the thunderous music and melodramatic graphics at the very beginning of The Untouchables, I knew I wasn't getting a subtle and nuanced crime drama like The Godfather, Goodfellas or LA Confidential. Actually, I knew that as soon as I saw Brian De Palma's name. What I was hoping for was a solid piece of entertainment, possibly with over-the-top violence and drama a-la Scarface. I was shocked by how much I ended up disliking it.
The first scene had a lot of potential, but it turned out that De Palma used up everything he had in that one shot - terrific cinematography, great art direction and costumes, and Robert De Niro. Those are pretty much the only things The Untouchables has going for it, and indeed, that first scene is one of the best in the entire film; the other standout scenes are Sean Connery's first two appearances, which probably earned him the very mysterious Oscar, but his character becomes bland in the second half and from then on his performance is less impressive, and it becomes ever more difficult to ignore his awful Irish accent. De Niro is impressive in his scenes, in a performance that's deliciously hammy and over-the-top, but it's not one of his best; even considering it's De Niro past his prime, in the rather slow period he had between Raging Bull and his comeback in Goodfellas, his Al Capone is still much less nuanced and less interesting than his characters in King of Comedy, True Confessions, The Mission, Once Upon a Time in America and Angel Heart.
And still, Connery and De Niro are the best actors in this mess. Kevin Costner is wooden in Keanu Reeves levels; it doesn't help one bit that his character is one of the most deplorable in the film but played as an All-American Hero, which makes him hypocritical as well as unlikable. Charles Martin Smith, Jack Kehoe, Billy Drago and the rest are nothing but cardboard caricatures, while Andy Garcia has his moments but clearly has no idea what his character is about, no more than De Palma does. Most disturbing of all is Patricia Clarkson who gives an unintentionally eery performance as Costner's wife, who seems like something out of The Stepford Wives.
On top of the bad acting and the shameless levels of historical inaccuracy, the film is a mess morally. Brian De Palma was never a master of moral ambiguity or subtlety, and here the morality is pure black and white, but he clearly doesn't really get what the story is actually about, and the result is a pretty enraging film with a hypocritical protagonist who goes on a killing spree and breaks every law possible to uphold a pointless law that he doesn't really care about, as the final scene clearly shows - yet the actor and director are both convinced that he's an infallible hero. All this in a movie full of clichÃ©s, with some moments that were taken right out of a Hallmark movie, with every possible 30's stereotype De Palma could think of, all of it very stylish but completely devoid of emotion. The explosion scene near the beginning is a perfect example.
So why, on earth, was The Untouchables so well received when it was first released? Maybe some cosmic radiation made everybody in the late 80's and early 90's think that Kevin Costner is a good actor - that was finally over when he made the combo of Waterworld and The Postman. The Untouchables at least looks great - the costumes and art direction are excellent, and for that I give it four stars; there's also a Ennio Morricone score, which has some fine themes, however those have nothing to do with what's going on on screen and are generally disruptive. The best thing I can say about The Untouchables, overall, is that it's unusual and memorable. But not in a good way.