excellent and gripping

Rating: 9/10 (5 May 2002)

phew!! what a gripping movie. brian de palma one of the masters of the whole gangster flick scene pulls off this stunner. easily among the best in the genre. the untouchables is a really tight and slick movie. i dont much care for historical accuracy in movies. well, thats why its called a movie, truth be damned.
kevin costner is good, but obviously the scene stealer is robert de niro in his small but devastating role as al capone. why sean connery won the best supporting actor oscar will remain a surprise. except for the fact that malone is pretty much the people's hero in the movie.
technically the movie is streets ahead of de palma's hard-hitting scarface and being told from the side of the good guys makes it maybe more fun to watch, more acceptable, if you will. the costume, the music, the cinematography, the editing everything is incredibly slick and all these terrific production values come together in a very slick manner.
apart from these, the script is what really steals the show, it is very tight, just the right amount of humour and ruthlessness. there are many obvious references to past classics. particularly the staircase scene a retelling of the classic scene form battleship potempkin is brilliantly done. brian de palma later uses a similar scene - stairway in the station in his other classic movie carlito's way quite effectively as well.
but this is the movie when all of brian de palma's tricks became treats. the movie where everything gels perfectly, forget historic accuracy, nobody goes to a movie to study history, this is a terrific retelling of an interesting historic episode.
a tight and slick 9!!