The Untouchables | |
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Theatrical poster |
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Directed by | Brian De Palma |
Produced by | Art Linson Executive Producer: Raymond Hartwick |
Written by | Original Novel: Oscar Fraley Eliot Ness Screenplay: David Mamet |
Starring | Kevin Costner Sean Connery Andy García Charles Martin Smith Robert De Niro Patricia Clarkson Billy Drago |
Music by | Ennio Morricone |
Cinematography | Stephen H. Burum, ASC |
Editing by | Gerald B. Greenberg Bill Pankow |
Distributed by | Paramount Pictures |
Release date(s) | June 2, 1987 |
Running time | 119 minutes |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Budget | $20,000,000[1] |
Gross revenue | $76,270,454 |
The Untouchables is an 1987 American crime-drama film based on the 1959 television series, and follows Eliot Ness's autobiographical account of his efforts to bring gangster Al Capone to justice during the Prohibition era. It was directed by Brian De Palma and adapted by David Mamet, and starred Kevin Costner as Ness, Sean Connery as Irish-American beat cop Jim Malone, and Robert De Niro as Capone.
Connery received the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role in the film. The film became a solid hit commercially and critically, grossing over $76 million domestically. A prequel, The Untouchables: Capone Rising, is in pre-production as of early 2010. Directed also by Brian De Palma, the new film's plot details the story of Al Capone's rise to power.
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Prohibition in the United States leads to an organized crime wave involving bootleg alcohol in the 1920s and early 1930s. The problem is most serious in Chicago, where gang leader Al Capone (Robert De Niro) has almost the whole city (even the Mayor of Chicago) under his control, and supplies low-quality liquor at high prices. Bureau of Prohibition agent Eliot Ness (Kevin Costner) is put in charge of leading the crusade against Capone and his empire. Ness's initial strategy is to conduct raids using a large squad of uniformed officers, but these fail due to corrupt cops who secretly tip Capone's men off.
Seeking a change of tactics, Ness solicits help from incorruptible Irish officer Jimmy Malone (Sean Connery), following a chance encounter one evening. Malone advises Ness to pick men who have never come under Capone's influence by recruiting directly from the police academy. Italian American trainee George Stone, formerly Giuseppe Petri (Andy García), is enlisted due to his superior marksmanship and intelligence under pressure. Joined by accountant Oscar Wallace (Charles Martin Smith), assigned to Ness from Washington, he has built an incorruptible team, capable of combating Capone.
Their first raid takes place in a post office where illegal liquor is stored. Malone and most of the police know where the alcohol is and leave it alone because no one wants to provoke Capone and his gang. As the four pick up steam and become noted by the press, Wallace informs Ness that Capone has not filed an income tax return in four years; therefore, they can try Capone for tax evasion, if nothing else. Ness is visited by an alderman who tries to bribe him into dropping the investigation. Ness angrily rejects the bribe and throws him out, but not before the alderman mockingly refers to the team as “untouchable” and says that Capone can have anyone killed who gets in his way.
Capone henchman Frank Nitti (Billy Drago) shows up outside Ness' house and threatens his family. Realizing that his wife and daughter are now targets, Ness has them moved to a safer place, then takes the team to the Canada – United States border for a raid on an incoming liquor shipment. Malone captures one of Capone’s bookkeepers, George (Brad Sullivan), and shoots an already-dead thug through the mouth to scare him into cooperating.
At the Chicago police station, Nitti, disguised as a policeman, kills both Wallace and George. Furious at the death of his friend, and frustrated at losing his key witness, Ness confronts Capone and his men; only the intervention of Malone keeps him from being killed on the spot. Malone persuades Ness to stall the district attorney from dropping the case, then corners corrupt police chief Mike Dorsett, who sold out Wallace and George to Capone. From Dorsett, he learns about another Capone accountant, Walter Payne, and calls Ness with the news. Just before Ness arrives, a knife-wielding thug breaks into Malone’s home; Malone forces him out the front door, only to fall victim to Nitti’s tommy gun ambush. He lives long enough for Ness and Stone to find him, and shows them which train Payne will take out of town before dying in Ness’ arms.
Ness and Stone arrive at Union Station and find Payne guarded by many gangsters. After a fierce shootout (an homage to the famous Odessa Steps scene from the 1926 Russian film The Battleship Potemkin), the two succeed in killing all of the gangsters and taking Payne alive.
Payne testifies in court about the enormous cash flows throughout the Capone organization. Ness, however, notices that Capone seems rather unperturbed despite the probability of serving a long prison sentence, and also sees Nitti carrying a gun inside his jacket. He escorts Nitti out of the courtroom with the bailiff and discovers that Nitti has the mayor’s permission to carry the weapon. Ness identifies Nitti as Malone’s murderer after seeing Malone's address in Nitti's matchbook.
Panicking, Nitti shoots the bailiff and flees to the roof of the building, exchanging gunfire with Ness along the way. Eventually, Ness has Nitti in his sights, but cannot bring himself to shoot him in cold blood. Nitti gives himself up to Ness, insulting Malone and bragging that he will never go to prison. Enraged at this idea and provoked to revenge, Ness throws Nitti off the roof to his death.
Back inside the courthouse, Stone shows Ness a document from Nitti’s jacket that reveals that the jury was bribed, explaining Capone's relaxed mood. The judge, who is also on Capone's payroll, has no intention of using it as evidence and is fully prepared to let Capone go free, until Ness bluffs that the judge's name is in Payne’s ledger of official payoffs. To avoid his corruption being revealed, the judge decides to switch juries with a neighboring courtroom and restart the trial. Before the trial can restart, however, Capone's lawyer withdraws the plea of "not guilty" for a plea of "guilty" without Capone's consent. Capone is subsequently sentenced to 11 years in prison.
Packing up his Chicago office, Ness ponders the Saint Jude pendant that Malone had carried with him for many years, and which Malone had given to him before dying. He gives the pendant to Stone, reasoning that Malone would have wanted a cop to have it. Out on the street, a reporter wishes to have a word from the man who put Capone away, but Ness demurs. When the reporter mentions that Prohibition is due to be repealed and asks what Ness might do then, Ness responds, "I think I’ll have a drink."
De Niro wanted one extra scene written for his character, and time to finish his commitment to the Broadway production of "Cuba and His Teddy Bear" and to gain about 30 pounds (14 kg) to play Capone; according to De Palma, De Niro was "very concerned about the shape of his face for the part."[1] The Untouchables began production in Chicago on August 18, 1986.[2]
A month after the film was released, De Palma downplayed his role on the film:[3]
Being a writer myself, I don't like to take credit for things I didn't do. I didn't develop this script. David used some of my ideas and he didn't use some of them. I looked upon it more clinically, as a piece of material that has to be shaped, with certain scenes here or there. But as for the moral dimension, that's more or less the conception of the script, and I just implemented it with my skills - which are well developed. It's good to walk in somebody else's shoes for a while. You get out of your own obsessions; you are in the service of somebody else's vision, and that's a great discipline for a director.
The Untouchables opened on June 3, 1987 in 1,012 theaters where it grossed USD $10 million on its opening weekend. It went on to make $76.2 million in North America.[4] According to producer Art Linson, the polls conducted for the film showed that approximately 50% of the audience was women. "Ordinarily, a violent film attracts predominantly men, but this is also touching, about redemption and relationships and because of that the audience tends to forgive the excesses when it comes to violence".[5]
The film has received a mostly positive reception from critics and has an 81% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Vincent Canby, of The New York Times, gave the movie a glowing review, calling it "a smashing work" and saying it was "vulgar, violent, funny and sometimes breathtakingly beautiful".[6] Roger Ebert, on the other hand, said, "The Untouchables has great costumes, great sets, great cars, great guns, great locations and a few shots that absolutely capture the Prohibition Era. But it does not have a great script, great performances or great direction".[7] Hal Hinson, in his review for the Washington Post, criticized De Palma's direction: "And somehow we're put off here by the spectacular stuff he throws up onto the screen. De Palma's storytelling instincts have given way completely to his interest in film as a visual medium. His only real concern is his own style".[8] Time magazine's Richard Schickel wrote, "Mamet's elegantly efficient script does not waste a word, and De Palma does not waste a shot. The result is a densely layered work moving with confident, compulsive energy".[9]
Ebert singled out De Niro's scenes portraying Al Capone as the biggest disappointment of the film, while giving praise to Sean Connery's work. While he was voted first place in a Empire magazine historical poll for worst film accent[10], Connery was awarded the 1987 Academy Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role for his performance. Pauline Kael called it "a great audience movie—a wonderful potboiler." Time magazine ranked it as one of the best films of 1987.[11]
Award | Person |
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Won: | |
Best Actor in a Supporting Role | Sean Connery |
Nominated: | |
Best Costume Design | Marilyn Vance |
Best Score | Ennio Morricone |
Best Art Direction - Set Decoration |
Patrizia von Brandenstein William A. Elliott Hal Gausman |
The film contains a great number of factual errors. Chief among these is the death of Frank Nitti. In the film Nitti is thrown off the roof of the courthouse building by Eliot Ness into a car in the courthouse parking lot. In actuality Nitti committed suicide in 1943 rather than face trial and imprisonment. Another notable innaccuracy is the number of Untouchables: in reality, there were ten of them and none of them were killed, whereas in the film there are only four and the film ends with only two of them still alive.
A side-scrolling video game was released by Ocean Software in 1989 on ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC, Commodore 64, MSX, Amiga, MS-DOS, and later on NES, SNES. Based loosely on the movie it lets you play out some of the more significant parts. It is set in Chicago and the main goal of the game is to take down Al Capone's henchmen and eventually get Capone in jail.
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