Very good actioner, but - well - one or two quibbles 20 years on

Rating: 7/10 (30 September 2009)

Brian DePalma's The Untouchables, made in 1987, demonstrates in what subtle ways film-making has changed in these past 20 years. The Untouchables is an admirable actioner in which, as of course, it should, good beats bad and we can all sleep soundly in bed at night knowing that guys such as Eliot Ness are out there fighting the good fight. It would be tactless to point out here that back in the real world, at the time Ness was operating, the cops were more intent on brutal strike-breaking and beating up the unemployed than nailing gangsters such as Al Capone, but then this is real life as seen through the Tinseltown lens, not real life as experienced by many on the dole queues. Anyway, this is Hollywood, and DePalma does point out that he has created a fiction based on fact and is not trying to show what really happened. And what he has created is a decent film, loads of action and great moments of suspense. I first saw The Untouchables when it was released and liked it. Twenty years on, it doesn't satisfy quite as much. In retrospect, and compared with similar work being produced these days, it is remarkably one-dimensional. There is precious little characterisation, precious little motivation and the ease with with Ness and just three sidekicks manages to nail Capone is all rather too glib. Capone, the unofficial mayor of Chicago, had, after all, the chief of police in his pocket, the city council, much of the judiciary and Lord know who else. But in the DePalma's version of events, Ness does it and does it seemingly with ease. A more satisfying film and the film a more modern director might have attempted would surely have shown a little more of the moral ambiguity which made it all possible, the process by which Capone held such supreme control. And I doubt it would have gone for what can only be described as the cartoon option of giving Ness three partners straight from central casting: the gruff, tough and straight Irish cop, who isn't above taking a dram himself despite buying alcohol being illegal; the kooky egghead accountant who discovers the joy of firing a shotgun and is also not above enjoying an illegal snifter; and the 'ethnic' from the wrong side of the tracks. Historically, Ness had a far larger squad of 'untouchables' and, ironically, wasn't actually responsible for putting Capone behind bars: the accountants did do that, finally nailing the seemingly invincible Capone because he hadn't paid any income tax, and the Volstead Act banning alcohol was eventually repealed. But what the hell, this is avowedly fiction and fiction is what we get. Subsidiary quibbles might be that however great an actor Robert De Niro is, on screen he is not Al Capone but invariably De Niro acting well. Ditto Sean Connery (who must be the first Irishman with a pronounced Scottish brogue). They suffer from the unfortunate fact that it is so difficult to suspend disbelief when they are on screen. Kevin Costner was a relative unknown when he starred in this film and Charles Martin Smith as the kooky accountant is one of those actors who face seems familiar but you can't quite place him. It seems unreasonable to quibble, but just how moral was the untouchable Eliot Ness when, as he does here, he takes justice into his own hands and hurls from a great height the, admittedly very nasty, Capone henchman who had brutally gunned down Sean Connery. This is morality American style. But what the hell, this film was made 20 years ago and cannot really be condemned for not pressing all the modern buttons as well as one might have liked. By all means worth a visit.