Another embarrassing picture...

Rating: 4/10 (1 February 2002)

I am a great fan of the original Untouchables TV series. While it was largely fiction, it was entertaining, had some memorable villains and lots of great actors (er, Special Guest Stars), like William Bendix, Nehemiah Persoff and Claire Trevor, just to name a few. I'd heard somewhere that the '87 DePalma movie was supposed to be more realistic and closer to fact. Well, I heard wrong. There might be a spoiler or two in here, just in case you haven't seen it.
My first criticism is a technical one. Near the beginning there are a lot of close-ups on Eliot Ness and his wife as they move about their house. I found this to go on for too long and it made me feel claustrophobic. The opening scene with Robert DeNiro as Al Capone was a complete rip-off from an earlier scene in the great "Key Largo". Like Johnny Rocco (played by my favorite actor, Edward G. Robinson), Capone is getting a shave. It was okay, I guess. Maybe if I'd have know what was coming later I'd have disliked it more.
Speaking of rip-offs, there's a later scene that features a shoot out on a staircase, complete with a woman pushing a baby carriage. This is STRAIGHT out of Film History 101: the Odessa Steps scene in "Potemkin", by Sergei Eisenstein. Okay, it was well done, and it could be excused. I'm not sure that many casual moviegoers would be aware of it or even care.
But then there's the Canadian Border scene, in which our heroes raid a convoy of bootleggers on horseback. So good so far. Soon the inevitable gunfight erupts. The air is thick with bullets. Maybe these horses were possessed of magical powers. They either dodge the bullet saturated air or the bullets pass right through them. I guess that's why they use blanks. I tried to sink down low in the chair in case anyone I knew might see me. This was where I realized I'd been suckered into yet another summer film for kids out of school.
There's a final point. At the end of the movie (big spoiler here), Ness gets into a fight with the evil Frank Nitti. He puts up a mighty struggle, but finally Ness gets the upper hand and tosses Nitti off the roof, presumably to his death. Okay, maybe it's not that big a spoiler since we all know Ness is going to win in the end.
There's a slight problem with this scene. Nitti, the real Frank Nitti, was NEVER thrown off a roof. In real life he committed suicide after he was convicted and sentenced to prison. So much for the movie being more true to fact.
I was also disappointed to see Sean Connery get an Academy Award for this. He's done many better films, but I guess the Academy members felt he was due an award and this was the only film he was in that year. He was probably the best thing in this movie, but the rest of it was so predictable that it was too much for his performance to overcome.
If you want to see a much better movie, try to find the original Untouchables pilot, "Scarface Mob". It has another of my all time favorite actors, Neville Brand, as Scarface Al Capone, Bruce Gordon as Frank "The Enforcer" Nitti and Robert Stack as Eliot Ness. Their performances are excellent. Here's a bit of trivia: The Chicago Outfit actually put a contract on Desi Arnaz, whose Desilu Studios produced the original Untouchables, because they didn't like how Frank Nitti was portrayed. I doubt the later version managed to evoke such a response, except perhaps by dissatisfied viewers....