Where the Legend and the Reality collide head on

Rating: 5/10 (13 December 2004)

WARNING- POSSIBLE SPOILERS WITHIN!!!
Brian De Palma's take on THE UNTOUCHABLES presents me with a conflict... I like it as good film making, but on another level I'm made very uneasy by it.
As a movie, it's a whole lot of fun; what we have here is a cowboys & indians sort of film, set in 1920s Chicago with Feds and gangsters. Lots of shoot-'em-up action, hard bitten, laconic dialogue, and even some dark humor. There's something for everyone here.
I was especially surprised, as well as amused, by De Palma's shootout sequence in the railroad station. It's an unabashed homage to Serge Eisensten's "staircase" sequence in THE BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN. De Palma manages to lend it a sort of dark humor to go along with the flying bullets and gouts of blood. It's hard to tell if he was paying tribute to POTEMKIN or if he was creating a parody of it, but it IS quite an effective sequence.
Special mention and praise is richly deserved by Sean Connery for his part as Jim Malone, the wise, world weary Chicago beat cop who takes Costner's neophyte Elliot Ness under his wing and teaches him the ways of Chicago style law enforcement. Connery's not only a great actor, but an enthusiastic scenery chewer of long standing; he has a GREAT time with the script & steals practically every scene he's in. I can imagine his scarcely concealed glee at delivering his most hard bitten lines... "OK Pal, why the Mohaska?" when he first meets Ness and discovers he's carrying a gun. He delivers THE memorable line of the film with his sage advice on dealing with Al Capone...
"If he pulls a knife, YOU pull a gun. If HE sends one of yours to the hospital, YOU send one of HIS to the MORGUE. THAT'S the Chicago Way!!!".
Connery must have had a ball with the part, and it's clear that he enjoyed every minute of his over-the-top performance.
Also worthy of praise was another over-the-top performance, De Niro's somewhat wild and savage portrayal of Alphonse "Snorky" Capone. Here's another scene stealer of the first order. Rod Stieger's take on Capone is certainly much more real, but De Niro's is a whole lot more FUN... it's closer to the legend than the truth.
Chicagoans (and us ex-Chicagoans) are a sort of a strange breed; over the decades Al Capone has become a larger than life legend for us, and we're prone to hold an odd sort of pride and affection for the gangster past of our city... many see Capone as a sort of Robin Hood figure in our past, as was shown in the Rat Pack film, ROBIN AND THE SEVEN HOODS. Snorky is, without a doubt, the most famous Chicagoan that there is, with Richard J. Daley, the ultimate political boss, running a distant second. Even today if anyone has the temerity to speak badly of Al Capone in the presence of a Chicagoan, he'll most likely get an earful of the perceived virtues of the man to counterbalance the criticisms. De Niro's performance does the Capone legend justice, and does honor to the Big Guy.
Watching veteran actors De Niro and Connery absolutely steamroller the rest of the cast is a joy to behold. It would have been interesting to see the two of them TOGETHER in more sequences, to watch them try to upstage each other... the rest of the cast didn't have a prayer in that contest with either one of them!
Costner's deliberately understated and almost effeminate portrayal of Elliot Ness is, ironically, probably closer to reality than any of the many other screen portrayals he's had. Mentioning Elliot Ness to my father or grandfather usually elicited a sneering obscenity or two, occasionally comments speculating about Ness's sexual preferences, and the standard comment that Ness wasn't a REAL cop; he was merely a paper shuffling tax man. This seems to be a widely held opinion of Ness among the generation of Chicagoans who lived through those times. Suffice it to say that the memory of Elliot Ness isn't held in high regard with many of them.
That's what's good here. There's another side to this coin tho.
Americans have, unfortunately, become a people who are more and more ignorant of their own history. What little we know about it comes from movies and pop cultural sources that are, due to artistic license, JUST PLAIN WRONG!!! THE UNTOUCHABLES is guilty of that.
For all of it's entertainment value the film is, historically speaking, a pack of utter BS. That's sort of dangerous; these days movies are cited more and more as historical reference, and the artistic license becomes fact.
Given that premise, movies CAN and DO rewrite history in the popular culture. We've seen it happen before in Hollywood's version of the settling of the West.
It's called "Propaganda". And it's dangerous to the health of the Republic to expose an uncritical public to it in large doses.
The most glaring example in THE UNTOUCHABLES... the death of Frank "The Enforcer" Nitti, as depicted in the film.
NO WAY is it anywhere near accurate; the reality is that after Capone's conviction, Nitti was also facing a prosecution that he had no prayer of beating. Before he could be brought to trial, Frank Nitti took his own life.
If taken in context, STRICTLY for it's entertainment value, I can heartily endorse THE UNTOUCHABLES. The trick here is to NOT believe everything that you see. Legends can be fun... but consider that Legends are NOT TRUTH.