The Untouchables review

Spoilers ahead 

Number 355 on the top 1000 films of all time is Brian De Palma's 1987 crime film 'The Untouchables.'

The Untouchables tells the true-life story of Elliot Ness (Kevin Costner) a prohibition agent who forms a team of untouchable, incorruptible men to bring down the era's biggest gangster and bootlegger Al Capone (Robert De Niro.) Ness' team consists of the veteran Irish-American cop James Malone (Sean Connery) young hot-shot George Stone (born Giuseppe Petri - Andy Garcia) and accountant Oscar Wallace (Charles Martin Smith.)

Firstly, let's address the Sean Connery in the room. Despite Malone being an Irish-American character, Connery's accent is neither Irish nor American. Like he does in every other role, he stubbornly played the role with his native Scottish accent. This was quite distracting to say the least, but what else can you expect from Sean Connery? He won the Best Supporting Oscar for his role and, despite the accent, I think it was a well-earned win. Malone acted as a mentor-cum-father figure for Ness helping to coach him on the best way to take down Al Capone. Connery played the role well bringing a great energy and life to the character.

The rest of the performances were fine, but none of them matched Sean Connery. Garcia was never really given the chance to exercise his acting chops - granted Stone IS a supporting character, but I don't think he was really fleshed out beyond being the best shot in his class. Charles Martin Smith was also good, but, alas, Oscar Wallace was the first of the Untouchables to prematurely die. It was a sad death as due to his accountant background he was the least suited for the way of life, but he still proved his worth for the team, being the one who suggests prosecuting Capone for tax evasion. 

Hell, I even liked Kevin Costner - Elliot Ness wasn't a character with a lot of depth, but he made for a good action hero and Costner played the role well. I was particularly surprised with Robert De Niro as Al Capone and I don't mean surprised in a good way. Considering I'm speaking about Robert FREAKING De Niro, I thought his portrayal of Capone was rather simplistic. There was none of the depth or complexity that I would expect from one of De Niro's roles. To paraphrase Capone himself, he was nothing but a receding hairline and a baseball bat.

Brian De Palma also played fast-and-loose with history often fictionalising or completely making up most of the film's key events. Ness's team had very little to do with Capone's tax evasion case and the train station shootout or the Canadian border raid never happened in real life. But that didn't matter as it all made for dramatic, entertaining viewing. The train station shootout was inspired by the Russian step scene in Battleship Potemkin with the parallels being obvious to see. Despite being pretty unbelievable/cheesy, it was still good fun to watch.

And that is a good summary of this film. It is an incredibly loose retelling of historical events but was still a thrilling watch. The acting wasn't fantastic except for Sean Connery, yet it still earned its place on the top 1000 films of all time.