The Untouchables

Chicago during Prohibition belongs to Al Capone. He has money, influence and enough people on his payroll to make conventional law enforcement almost useless. Eliot Ness arrives with the unenviable job of doing something about it.

His first attempt goes badly. Ness soon discovers that having the law on your side means very little when you cannot trust the people supposedly enforcing it. The breakthrough comes when he meets veteran policeman Jimmy Malone, who understands Chicago far better than Ness does and knows that fighting Capone requires a team that cannot be bought.

Along with sharpshooter George Stone and accountant Oscar Wallace, they become the Untouchables.

What follows is less a complicated crime investigation than a steadily escalating confrontation. Every success brings Ness closer to Capone, but it also makes the consequences more personal. By the time the authorities realise that tax evasion may be the most practical way to put Capone behind bars, this stopped being merely another assignment for Ness a long time ago.

Eliot Ness could easily have been the least interesting character in his own film. Surrounded by gangsters, gunmen and Sean Connery being Sean Connery, the clean-cut federal agent initially seems almost too respectable.

That is actually what makes Kevin Costner work in the role.

Ness begins with a slightly naive belief that being honest and following procedure should be enough. Chicago rapidly knocks that out of him. His principles remain, but his understanding of what those principles might cost becomes considerably less comfortable.

Costner wisely doesn't try to out-perform everyone around him. Ness is the steady centre while the personalities surrounding him provide most of the fireworks. Watching that controlled federal agent gradually become someone willing to chase Frank Nitti across a rooftop gives the character an arc without turning him into another version of the criminals he is hunting.

Then Jimmy Malone walks in.

Sean Connery won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for the role, and it isn't difficult to understand why. Malone gives The Untouchables much of its personality.

He knows the streets, knows the corruption and, crucially, knows what Ness is getting himself into before Ness does.

Malone's famous question gets to the heart of the film: how far are you prepared to go to get Capone?

That relationship gives the story its emotional weight. Ness has authority, but Malone has experience. One has the mission; the other teaches him how to survive it.

Connery also brings warmth to a film that could otherwise have become rather cold. Malone feels like a man rather than a gangster-movie archetype, which makes what eventually happens to him hit considerably harder.

Robert De Niro Doesn't Need Much Screen Time

Robert De Niro's Al Capone isn't constantly on screen, but he rarely needs to be.

His presence hangs over Chicago.

De Niro plays him as a man completely comfortable with power. He can smile for journalists, talk about business and present himself as a respectable public figure while violence is being carried out on his behalf.

And then comes the baseball bat.

The dinner scene is still nasty because De Niro doesn't begin it like a raging psychopath. Capone calmly talks about teamwork while walking around the table holding a baseball bat. Everyone sitting there understands something dreadful is about to happen before it actually does.

When the violence arrives, the point is brutally clear.

This isn't simply a loud gangster. This is a man who knows everyone in the room is terrified of him — and rather enjoys reminding them why.

Andy Garcia's George Stone arrives as the young recruit with the shooting skills Malone immediately recognises.

The recruitment scene tells you almost everything necessary about the character. Malone deliberately provokes him, Stone refuses to be intimidated, and Ness discovers exactly the sort of policeman they need.

Garcia doesn't get the emotional material Connery does, but Stone adds something important to the group. He's sharp, confident and capable without feeling like another copy of Malone.

And when The Untouchables reaches its most famous sequence, Stone gets one of the film's coolest moments.

A pram is rolling down a staircase. Gunfire is erupting everywhere.

Stone still manages to make the shot.

Very 1980s. Completely ridiculous. Absolutely brilliant.

If you remember only one sequence from The Untouchables, there's a good chance it's Union Station.

Ness waits on the enormous staircase while a mother struggles with a baby carriage. He eventually goes to help her just as the men he has been waiting for arrive.

Then everything explodes.

De Palma stretches seconds into what feels like minutes. The carriage begins bouncing down the steps while bullets fly around it, Ness desperately tries to control the situation and George Stone enters at precisely the right moment.

The sequence deliberately echoes the Odessa Steps scene from Sergei Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin, but you don't need to know that to appreciate how beautifully constructed it is.

It's suspense turned into choreography.

You know exactly where the carriage is. You know exactly where the gunmen are. And De Palma keeps forcing your attention between them until the tension becomes almost unbearable.

Brian De Palma doesn't make The Untouchables look remotely ordinary.

This is Prohibition-era Chicago seen through the eyes of a filmmaker who understands that gangster stories benefit from a little mythology. Huge staircases, dark alleys, expensive restaurants, railway stations and grand government buildings make the characters seem as though they're fighting over an entire city rather than investigating one criminal organisation.

Ennio Morricone's score pushes things even further.

Sometimes it pounds forward with the urgency of a thriller; elsewhere it gives the Untouchables an almost heroic quality. Subtlety isn't always the objective here.

And that's fine.

The Untouchables wants to entertain you.

The biggest reason The Untouchables still works is that it was made with enormous confidence.

The cast is excellent. The production design gives Chicago scale. Morricone's music is unmistakable. De Palma constructs individual sequences rather than simply pointing a camera at the action.

Most importantly, the film understands momentum.

At just under two hours, there isn't much wasted movement. Assemble the team. Hit Capone's operation. Discover the tax case. Raise the stakes. Lose people. Get Capone.

It moves.

That straightforward construction makes it extremely easy to revisit.

There are moments when The Untouchables lays things on rather thick.

Capone can feel closer to a larger-than-life movie villain than a detailed portrait of a real criminal. Some dialogue practically announces the film's themes rather than allowing us to discover them. Ness's journey from inexperienced federal agent to action hero also happens with considerable Hollywood efficiency.

If you're expecting the moral complexity of The Godfather, this isn't really playing the same game.

But I'm not convinced it needs to.

De Palma is making a grand cops-versus-gangsters adventure. Once you accept that, much of what could be criticised as excess becomes part of the fun.

One of the interesting things about The Untouchables is how little it visually resembles the decade in which it was made.

There are no neon streets, synth-pop montages or fashionable 1980s clothes to date it. Yet its attitude feels unmistakably like a big 1980s studio picture.

Everything is slightly bigger.

The heroes are heroic. The villain is enormous. The shootouts are elaborate. Morricone's score announces that something important is happening and De Palma isn't embarrassed about making scenes look spectacular.

It's a period gangster film made with blockbuster confidence.

That combination turned out rather well.

The Untouchables arrived decades after Hollywood had already established the gangster film, yet it found its own identity within the genre.

Sean Connery's Malone became one of his most celebrated performances. The Union Station shootout remains a textbook piece of suspense filmmaking. De Niro's relatively brief appearance as Capone produced scenes people still immediately recognise.

Perhaps more importantly, the film is incredibly accessible.

You don't need a detailed knowledge of Prohibition, organised crime or Eliot Ness. The central conflict is deliberately simple: four men who can't be bought against an organisation that assumes everybody has a price.

Sometimes that's enough.

Absolutely.

The Untouchables isn't the deepest gangster movie ever made and doesn't pretend to be. It's a beautifully constructed, enormously entertaining crime thriller with a terrific cast and several sequences that are better staged than most entire movies.

Kevin Costner gives it its moral centre. Robert De Niro gives it menace. Brian De Palma gives it style.

And Sean Connery walks away with the film.

If we're building a list of the best gangster movies of the 1980s, this belongs there without much argument.

Movies in the 80s rating: 9/10