In honor of this film's 25th Anniversary, here's a fresh look at a film I've seen several times before, but not in many years.
Kevin Costner was not yet a box office superstar when he
landed his first big role in Brian De Palm’s The Untouchables, playing the Treasury Department golden boy Eliot
Ness, the law man who got Al Capone. He was so much not yet a star that the
first shot of him in the film he has his back to camera for the majority of the
scene. It is his wife Catherine, played by Patricia Clarkson in her film debut,
who gets all the face time in the scene. This is actually the second scene in
the film following the bombing of a Chicago business establishment by one of
Capone’s henchmen, the blast taking a 10-year-old girl as collateral damage.
These first two scenes suggest that two things were
foremost on David Mamet’s (who wrote the screenplay sort of based on Ness’s
autobiography) mind: the violence committed by Capone and the terror he
inflicted on the city of Chicago; and the idea that Ness was a family man, a
working stiff who primarily wanted to protect other innocents from the harm
that befalls that little girl. After all, when we first see Ness on screen he’s
reading the front page of the newspaper announcing the bombing and death of the
child.
It’s not really a film about Capone or Ness. Regardless,
Capone as portrayed by Robert De Niro is a larger than life character. He
exudes menace in his every look, even when he’s giving what is meant to be a
light-hearted interview to reporters. De Palma, never a director to shy away
from violent images, makes no exceptions here. Policemen are gunned down, blood
soaks the aftermath of violent scenes and in one of the film’s more brutal
moments based on a real incident, Capone bludgeons one of his men with a
baseball bat.
Ness is less important as a central character than the
relationship of the eponymous group of lawmen who aim to take down Capone. Ness
first recruits Jimmy Malone (Sean Connery), an old beat cop who displays his
integrity in their first meeting. They are soon joined by Oscar Wallace
(Charles Martin Smith), an FBI accountant who hits upon the idea of prosecuting
Capone for tax evasion, and George Stone (Andy Garcia), a young and eager
police recruit. Together they represent the incorruptible arm of law
enforcement. While Capone has his hand in everything from city cops to judges
and politicians, these four men are in it for a greater cause.
Sean Connery’s career began for me with The Untouchables. It’s the first time I
knew anything about him. Without any knowledge of his James Bond history, I
didn’t see him as iconic. Instead his character’s role as a mentor to Eliot
Ness came across in Connery’s performance which I now see for the first time is
much more than an old guy winning a late Oscar for sub-par work. As the
accountant Wallace, Smith glides through like he’s always excited to be along
for the ride. He plays wielding a shotgun in shootout like it’s the highlight
of his life.
De Palma has always had a great eye for shot composition
and camera movement. This was his second time working with his longtime
cinematographer Stephen Burum. Together they create signature shots that are
still mimicked by other filmmakers and studied in film schools for their
technique. They love overhead crane shots and long unbroken takes that tie
together several story elements in a single shot. Rarely do movies simply look
as good as this one. The color scheme recalls The Godfather, its most obvious thematic influence, with ambers,
browns and sepia towns drowning out any hint of brightness. The suits designed
by Giorgio Armani are simply gorgeous, befitting the time period and making me
long for a time when men wore nice suits for general occasions. The production
design places a strong emphasis on the decadence of Capone’s lifestyle. The
décor in his hotel suite is ostentatious, showing his proclivity for living
like an emperor high in his palace.
If this movie were made today it would exceed two and a
half hours. Twenty-five years ago it clocked in at under two. Why is that? Why
was David Mamet able to pack such a story into so short a running time? And
that includes a long action sequence at the end without any dialogue that
hardly advances the plot and could have been wrapped up in less than half the
time. Mamet’s dialogue is best described as economical. He never uses three
words where one or two would suffice. When he directs his own screenplays a
very specific rhythm comes out of his actors’ performances that lift his
dialogue to an almost poetic quality. In the hands of another director you can
still here that Mamet cadence, but something is missing.
A story by producer Art Linson goes that the classic
shootout at the train station at the end of the film was born of Mamet’s
refusal to write additional scenes after turning in his finished product.
Unable to replicate his signature writing style De Palma had to come up with a
compelling scene without any lines. The train station scene is well-known to
most moviegoers. Even if you haven’t seen The
Untouchables, the scene pops up in montages occasionally and was parodied in
The Naked Gun 33 1/3: The Final Insult.
Of course it’s also a direct homage to Sergei Eisenstein’s famous Odessa Steps
sequence in Battleship Potemkin.
Watching it for the first time in many years I see how brilliantly
choreographed it is, how the action is thrillingly set up from the moment Ness
and Stone enter the station, the way the clock ticks away the minutes in real
time. The silence of the station except for a mother with her baby struggling
to get a carriage and a suitcase up the steps is eerie in its mounting tension.
Ennio Morricone’s sometimes triumphant and often
melancholy score is the final element that fills in the missing gaps. Imagine
the first liquor raid that Ness and his three cohorts conduct without the
accompanying music, or the grand battle on the Canadian border as the four
Untouchables gallop in on horseback. Take away Morricone’s themes and your left
with something that might otherwise be regarded as an order action sequence.
All that is the glue that binds the edges, but the core
of the film is the Malone and Ness relationship. Though Mamet’s screenplay
doesn’t get too involved, it is rich enough to suggest a strong friendship
without which the audience would just be subjected to another cops and robbers
thriller. There’s real emotion at the end when Ness parts ways from the men
he’s worked so long with, from the job he’s devoted three years of his life to.
The more I think about The Untouchables,
the more I think it belongs on anyone’s list of classic films.
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