About as good as a De Palma film can get

Rating: 8/10 (14 September 2004)

Brian De Palma is a well-known director; I guess what he is known for is taking a theme that, in one way or another, involves violence and action, and he puts it on the silver screen, with immense amounts of both violence and action, labeled as drama, instead of more conventional drama. We saw it with Carrie, we saw it with Scarface, and now, we see it with The Untouchables. Now, those are the only three movies of his that I've seen, but if all of his movies are like this, then so be it. If not, then please forgive me for this review, and chalk it up to ignorance on my part. The plot is very good, and mostly well-paced; I understand that it's not entirely accurate to the original, actual story of Al Capone, but it's based somewhat on him. Personally, as long as the film is interesting, and somewhat true to facts, I don't mind the film not being the real story. Now, I said the pace was *mostly* good; once the first hour and a half has passed, the film goes a little slowly for the next fifteen minutes or so, but then it picks up again, and doesn't drag at all for the rest of the picture. The acting is all great; Costner, Connery, Garcia, Martin Smith, De Niro... even the supporting cast was great; I seriously doubt that Frank Nitti could have been portrayed better than Billy Drago did. His snake-like appearance and behavior was excellent, really made the character. Robert De Niro probably gives the most impressive performance in the whole film; unfortunately, he gets far too little screen time. Whenever you do see him on-screen, you thoroughly enjoy it. The four "untouchables" have great chemistry, which is what really makes their "team" work, together with their diverse personalities. The way they did the whole late twenties look, with the cars, the buildings, the clothes, etc. was great. It looks and feels authentic. The dialog was well-written, but the film does arguably have too many one-liners, for this type of film. The action is well-done, well-choreographed and very cool. The shootouts, the chasing... the film also seemed to have a very impressive amount of great, memorable scenes, for such a short gangster piece(compared to, say, The Godfather, which is three hours long). The score is excellent; Ennio Morricone usually does great scores, and this is no exception. The cinematography is pretty impressive, and De Palma makes great use of closeups, pans, zooming and long takes. All in all, a great film that is just slightly less than a masterpiece. Maybe De Palma could have made it greater, had he just toned the action down(not that I would want that, honestly; I'm fine with how the film and his overall style of film-making is), but decided to make it more "accessible" instead. Maybe he's just incapable of making a true masterpiece, due to his style. Who knows. I recommend this to any fan of gangster/mafia films, any of the actors, and/or Brian De Palma. 8/10