I pretty much spend my time in a perpetual eye roll when watching this.

Rating: 5/10 (28 September 2012)

There is so much blatant emotional manipulation of the audience going on here that I stood and applauded when director DePalma crashed and burned with "Bonfire of the Vanities" three years later. Justice delayed is better than nothing.
First, what's great about this film? The casting is wonderful. DeNiro gives the best interpretation of Al Capone I've seen on film, capturing the essence of a guy who enjoys being the darling of the media and perceived as a sophisticated clever businessman - the first dapper Don you might say - but at his core he is a murderous thug with an uncontrollable temper. There's a very young Andy Garcia as the uncorrupted rookie chosen as one of the untouchables, and then there is Sean Connery who won an Oscar for his performance as a cop, Jim Malone, tired of the good fight because he feels it just can't be won given the tide of money fueling all of the violence and corruption, and just wants to wait out his time walking a beat until his pension comes due until Ness comes along. I'll get back to Kevin Costner later.
What's bad? The entire screenplay and its execution. If it's not just lying there it is trying to emotionally manipulate you, primarily with enforcer Frank Nitti doing what Capone is too important to do now - killing off lovable characters with a smile on his face. The film just can't let the conclusion be about the novel way in which Capone is brought down, it has to have a fight to the death involving Capone's surrogate Frank Nitti and Elliot Ness - a fight that never happened. Nitti met death at his own hand in 1943. And don't get me started on weird pieces of dialogue that don't even seem to mean anything. Example: Connery's character has just clubbed a mob guy as the untouchables burst in on a bootleg operation. He says as the mob guy lies there unconscious "How do you think he feels now - better or worse?" Huh??? What does that even mean?
Then there is Patricia Clarkson as Mrs. Ness playing this entire thing like her husband is Ward Cleaver going off to sell insurance every day, not battle a band of killers. She's got this weird constantly smiling Stepford Wife vibe going that is just over the top strange given the situation.
Finally, let me talk about Costner as Elliott Ness. The portrayal he gives is one of a guy who initially starts this assignment because he's told to do so, because "it is the law gentlemen", and he makes a complete mess of it. Only when some comrades fall in battle combined with the tutorage of Connery's Jim Malone on strategy, does Ness become effective at his job. At the end, when the fight is done, and he's put away Capone, the press asks Ness what he'll do after Prohibition is repealed. Ness says he'll have a drink. Again, huh??? No more reflection than this on the irony of the entire situation? In fact, the Untouchables era was the peak of Elliott Ness' career. Afterwards his marriage collapsed, his career stalled, and he failed at about everything he tried, so maybe Ness was indeed this hapless guy without a star, and thus Costner's portrayal would have been spot on rather than just a stiff poorly directed one.