The Untouchables

**The Untouchables** is a 1987 film starring Kevin Costner, Charles Martin Smith, Andy Garcia, Robert De Niro and Sean Connery, directed by Brian De Palma, written by David Mamet and produced by Art Linson.

## Plot

During Prohibition in 1930, reigning crime kingpin Al Capone has nearly the whole city of Chicago under his control and supplies illegal liquor. Bureau of Prohibition agent Eliot Ness is assigned to stop Capone, but his first attempt at a liquor raid fails due to corrupt policemen tipping Capone off. He has a chance meeting with Irish-American veteran officer James 'Jimmy' Malone, who is fed up with the rampant corruption and offers to help Ness, suggesting that they find a man from the police academy who has not yet come under Capone's influence. They recruit Italian-American trainee George Stone (AKA Giuseppe Petri) for his superior marksmanship and intelligence. Joined by accountant Oscar Wallace, assigned to Ness from Washington, D.C., they conduct a successful raid on a Capone liquor cache and start to gain positive publicity, with the press dubbing them "The Untouchables." Capone later kills the henchman in charge of the cache for trying to overthrow him.

Wallace discovers that Capone has not filed an income tax return for some years and suggests that the team try to build a tax evasion case against him, since he is well-insulated from his other crimes. An alderman offers Ness a bribe to drop his investigation, subtly warning him that Capone is too powerful to worry about killing policemen, but Ness refuses it and throws him out of the office. When Capone gunman Frank Nitti threatens Ness' family, Ness immediately moves his wife and daughter to a safe house. His team flies to the Canada–United States border to intercept an incoming liquor shipment, aided by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, killing several gangsters and capturing George, a Capone bookkeeper. To scare George into agreeing to testify against Capone, Malone holds up one of the dead gangsters behind a window so that everyone can see how he shoots him through the mouth, splattering blood all over and eliciting disapproval from the Canadian Police Chief who disagrees with Chicago-style violence.

Wallace prepares to escort George from the Chicago police station to a safe house, but they are shot and killed by Nitti, who has infiltrated the station dressed as an police officer. Ness confronts Capone and his men over the killings, but Malone intervenes to save him from being killed and urges Ness to persuade the district attorney not to dismiss the charges against Capone. Realizing that police chief Mike Dorsett sold out Wallace and George, Malone fights with Dorsett and eventually forces him to reveal the whereabouts of Walter Payne, Capone's chief bookkeeper. That evening, a knife-wielding hooligan sneaks into Malone's apartment; Malone chases him out with a sawed-off shotgun, but falls victim to Nitti's Tommy gun ambush. Ness and Stone arrive at the apartment; before dying, Malone tells them which train Payne will take out of town.

At Union Station, Ness and Stone find Payne guarded by several gangsters. While waiting for Payne to appear, a young mother with two suitcases and a toddler in a baby carriage laboriously climbs the lobby steps and Ness eventually decides to help. When he's about to reach the top, the gangsters appear, a gunfight breaks out on the steps while the baby's carriage slowly rolls down: Stone stops it with his legs as he keeps shooting down gangsters. Later, when Payne testifies at Capone's trial to explain the untaxed cash flows throughout the syndicate, Ness observes that Capone seems unusually relaxed and also sees Nitti carrying a gun under his jacket.

Ness has the bailiff remove Nitti and searches him outside the courtroom. Nitti's gun is legal because he has the mayor's permission to carry the weapon and is let go, but in searching him Ness finds a matchbook in Nitti's pocket containing Malone's address and realizes that Nitti killed Malone. Nitti shoots the bailiff and flees to the courthouse roof, but Ness gives chase and manages to catch up to him in the ensuing confrontation. Ness initially helps Nitti up to safety, but then proceeds to throw him off the roof to his death after Nitti mocks the way Malone died.

Stone gives Ness a list, taken from Nitti's jacket, that shows the jurors are bribed. When the judge refuses to consider it as evidence of jury tampering, and thereby suggesting that he is on Capone's payroll as well, Ness bluffs him into thinking that his corruption can be proven by his name appearing in Payne's ledger of payoffs. Ness proposes, and the judge subsequently orders, that the jury in the Capone trial be switched with the one in an innocuous divorce trial in the adjacent courtroom, prompting Capone to explode in anger and Capone's lawyer to enter a guilty plea without Capone's consent; while his adjutants try to keep Capone from attacking the lawyer, he is sentenced to eleven years in prison.

Following Capone's imprisonment, Ness closes up his office and gives Malone's St. Jude medallion and callbox key to Stone as a farewell gift. As Ness leaves the police station, a reporter mentions a rumor that Prohibition may soon be repealed and asks what Ness will do if that happens. Ness replies, "I think I'll have a drink."