Making The Most Of Blood, Smoke, And Fedoras

Rating: 7/10 (21 May 2013)

At the heart of the matter, "The Untouchables" is a comic book put on screen: Its characters are one-dimensional; its storyline abounds with convenience and cliché. But the full commitment of its principals on both sides of the camera makes this riveting all the same.
Chicago in 1930 is a "city at war." A gang boss named Al Capone (Robert De Niro) holds court in a barber chair, explaining he is only supplying a need. "What is bootlegging? On a boat, it's bootlegging. On Lake Shore Drive, it's hospitality." But Prohibition is the law of the land, and when Capone's ways of breaking that law include blowing up buildings and killing little girls, it's time for U. S. Treasury Agent Eliot Ness (Kevin Costner) to step in.
Director Brian De Palma was slumming when he made this film, according to a DVD documentary. Maybe that was the secret; he didn't press so hard. The film exists as a series of set pieces, much like other De Palma films, and the attention to stylistic visuals and atmospherics are there. But this time he lets the story breathe a bit more, giving you something to care about or laugh at between what amounts to an exhausting amount of carnage.
How bloody is this film? There's one cast member listed in the credits as "Gunned Head." Good luck finding him, too.
Iconography is everything in De Palma films. Here he not only quotes from other directors, but develops some iconography of his own, like a famous moment when Capone expounds at length about his love for baseball and another when Ness is told about "The Chicago Way" by an older cop named Malone (Sean Connery): "He sends one of yours to the hospital, you sent one of his to the morgue." One shootout scene in a railroad terminal managed to both quote a famous film ("The Battleship Potemkin") and become uniquely famous on its own.
The body count is matched only by the cliché count. Every pavement is slick with rain. A dying man imparts important information to a friend with his last breath. A couple of bottles happen to be standing on a building ledge just so they can explode in sequence in the middle of a gun battle. Ness actually tells someone he'll see Capone in hell.
Many reviewers here criticize Kevin Costner as Ness. Actually, I think some of them criticize Costner as Costner, which would be fine with me except for the fact he's very good here playing Ness as unblinking straight arrow with a touch of vulnerability. Connery won an Oscar for his role here, and while he's quite good, I think Costner delivers a better performance. He has to stand up to the star power of both Connery and De Niro and does so, allowing them the big moments their characters require but keeping himself at the center throughout. I even like Costner's smaller moments here, like eating a sandwich and trying to make small talk with a young cop during a stakeout.
I do wonder why screenwriter David Mamet has him talking like a robot at times, but I like how Mamet keeps the story focused on the action, which De Palma supplies brilliantly. There's some questioning of the wisdom of cracking down on something as uncontrollable as people drinking booze, and even a darker thread involving Ness's being tempted to pursue extra-legal methods in pursuit of his aims. Still, when you have such wonderful bad guys as De Niro's Capone and Billy Drago's ultra-creepy button man Frank Nitti, it's hard to stop and ponder the deeper philosophy at work, which is part of "The Untouchables'" strength. You just want to see these guys die nasty.
Also great in this movie is the music by Ennio Morricone, which stirs you up before you see a single character and keeps you on the edge of your seat until the end. Yes, there's something simplistic at the heart of "The Untouchables," but it works so well I was left wondering if that stripped-down quality isn't the secret of its success.