The Untouchables

In writing about Robert De Niro movies it may strange to include The Untouchables. De Niro is a supporting character, the mob boss Al Capone. But it has become an iconic De Niro role. The baseball bat scene. The crying turn to smiling at the opera. Or "I want him dead! I want his family dead!"

Really The Untouchables had two scene stealers. Sean Connery, in as much a thank you for all the Bond money as for the performance, won the Oscar for playing the straight beat cop who helps Kevin Costner's Eliot Ness beat Capone. He grinds out his line as if he were chewing gristle, and I couldn't tell if he was trying an Irish accent or just using his own Scottish one.

But he's fun. The Untouchables is a fun, flashy film, even if it is unhistorical and derivative. After all, that's what Brian DePalma is known for, right? He took the template of the old-fashioned gangster picture, made it look sleek and modern, and cast it well (Costner, the lead, is made blander than it would seem possible). But he's also a director who has other directors swimming around in his bloodstream. For Dressed to Kill he borrowed from Hitchcock, but in The Untouchables it's Sergei Potemkin. In the train station scene, which is a great set-piece, the baby carriage scene seems thievery more than homage.

The film is sumptuous in all its colors, and it's great sets and costumes. David Mamet's script is surprisingly sentimental--could he have really written the scenes with Ness and his wife and children? At least in the fight between Connery and the crooked police captain the "fucks' start flying out.

As for history, the TV show on which is was based was before the time of the demographic of the 1987 audience. I think they might have been trying to tap the Scarface crowd, and Paramount owned the intellectual property of the TV Untouchables. They went from nine Untouchables to four (was anyone else surprised that Charles Martin Smith's accountant character knew how to ride a horse?) and made a taut, wonderful story. And a story it was. Eliot Ness was real, Al Capone was sent up for tax evasion, and Frank Nitti was an enforcer for Capone, but Nitti did not fall into a car from a significant height--he outlived Capone and became his successor.

But no matter. The Connery character is completely fictional, and this is more like the Westworld version of T-men and gangsters.

And as for De Niro, the reason I watched it, this seems to be about the time he lets his inner spotlight-hugger comes out. Al Pacino would perfect it in Dick Tracy, and De Niro would do almost the meta thing in Analyze This, but his Capone is just great prosciutto ham. The little speech about teamwork in baseball before the punishment, or the way he wears his camel-hair coat down the stairs while calling Costner out on his threats. It's a star turn by a great star.