formula nonsense

Rating: 4/10 (12 January 2011)

This crowd-pleasing revision of the Elliot Ness-Al Capone rivalry certainly has its share of expertly choreographed shootouts, including a heart-stopping confrontation on the steps of a railway station, complete with Peckinpah slow-motion effects and an Eisenstein baby carriage in peril. But it takes more than exciting gunplay to make an epic gangster drama, and all the usual film school references expected from director Brian De Palma (a famous Hitchcock plagiarist) can't hide the cartoon trappings.
The end result is the sort of summertime adventure that passed for popular entertainment in the late 1980s, a grand and artificial gangland opera designed with careful attention to reliable stereotypes, right down to the disposition of the incorruptible quartet of G-Men, shown striding abreast and in step down the vice-riddled avenues of Prohibition-era Chicago: the idealistic, naÃ¯ve leader; his salty veteran partner, a crack-shot rookie cop; and a meek, comic relief accountant who naturally becomes a terror with a shotgun.
Robert De Niro steals the film with his over-the-top caricature of Al Capone, but (true to life) his conviction on tax evasion charges lacks a satisfying narrative punch. The script (written by David Mamet, apparently while he was sleeping) takes so many other liberties with the facts, so why not have Big Al brought down in a final, heroic hail of gunfire instead?