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.

Brazil review

 Number 299 on the top 1000 films of all time is Terry Gillam's dystopian black comedy drama Brazil.

Sam Lowry (Jonathan Pryce) is a low-level bureaucrat in an unnamed dystopian future. He frequently dreams of saving a mystery woman from death. When a typing errors results in the erroneous death of cobbler Archibald Buttle, instead of rogue heating engineer Archibald Tuttle (Robert De Niro) Lowry tries to undo the mistake which brings him into contact with the woman he has been dreaming about.

Surreal? Arthouse? Experimental? A satirical look at the modern world? However you look at it, there is no denying that Brazil is a weird film. Made by Terry Gillam and co-starring Michael Palin, it was a bit like a twisted Monty Python misadventure. Rather than one cohesive narrative, the film jumped from surreal scene to surreal scene - we have Sam Lowry dreaming of being a winged warrior saving a woman from falling to her death, the next we jump to Archibald Buttle being arrested and sentenced to death and then Sam is fighting this massive robotic samurai. It really was just bizarre and after a while the weirdness all became a bit much. I just don't have the patience for it. Maybe if there was an obvious deeper meaning than I would get it, but it just seemed like it was being weird for the sake of being weird.

Having said that, Terry Gillam was inspired by 1984, despite having never read it. Gillam was also highly inspired by Fellini and I could see his influence here. Brazil was like a grotesque parody of both Fellini's work and of 1984. Lowry is the stand-in for Winston Smith, another low-level bureaucrat stuck in a totalitarian system. It's not Big Brother and Emmanuel Goldstein, but it is dystopic nonetheless. The origins of this world are not explored in any great detail, but there is an over-reliance on technology which usually malfunctions. And *spoiler alert* just when it looks like Lowry has escaped and will live happily ever after, it was all a torture-inspired hallucination.

And I know this was in the eighties, but the special effects looked awful. From the tinny explosions to the flamethrowers that were obviously painted paper, they really looked like they were from a cheap B-film. Terry Gillam has referred to this as the second in his trilogy of imagination, and it was nominated for best original screenplay. There is no doubt that this was an original, imaginative film. Confusing, surreal and abstract, but definitely original. I can safely say that I haven't seen anything like it before.

The Deer Hunter review

 Number 165 on the top 1000 films of all time is Michael Cimino's 1978 epic Vietnam war film 'the Deer Hunter.'

Michael (Robert De Niro), Nicky (Christopher Walken) and  Steven (John Savage) are three steel workers and happy go-lucky young men who enlist to fight in Vietnam. They are caught by the Viet Cong and are subjected to such brutal torture that each man's life changes forever. Meryl Streep and John Cazale co-star in what very easily could have been just another film about Vietnam.

This film takes a while to get going but when it does, you're in for a hell of a ride. At three hours long, I would argue the film is a little bloated with the first hour seeming to last forever. I found myself constantly wondering when we're going to get to Vietnam. Instead, I was subjected to the three leads and their friends drinking in a bar, an extended marriage scene and, of course, the eponymous deer-hunting scene. Although having said that, the bar scene where the group of friends belt out Frankie Valli's 'Can't Take my Eyes off you,' was a sight to behold. The absolute perfect song for that scene. Reportedly, Michael Cimino had the actors sing along to the actual song rather than a backing track, which is standard film practice. Cimino argued this would increase the realism of the scene which it absolutely did.

The first hour is, of course, the film's set-up: showcasing the normal life of our heroes before they embark on their journey. For us to understand how Vietnam has changed them, we have to understand how they were before, especially Nicky who suffers the worse trauma of the three, but more on that later. Out of all the men, he is one of the first to start dancing and singing to Franki Valli, demonstrating how he is the most jovial and outgoing of the three. Steven is a little shy whereas Michael is already a little hardened. Out of the three he goes through the most profound transformation.

Where this film really kicks into gear is in the controversial Russian Roulette scene, which was a masterpiece of dramatic tension. Prisoner to the Viet Cong, our three heroes are forced to play Russian Roulette, first against the other prisoners and then each other. Steven quickly falls to pieces and is consigned to a watery pit full of rats, leaving behind Michael and Nick as last men standing. De Niro and Walken are both brilliant here - Walken won Best Supporting Actor for his role, which was well-deserved. His fear was palpable.

Michael ups the stakes by adding three bullets into the revolver instead of just one, but this is all part of his plan to escape. And this is when all hell breaks loose. In the film's most thrilling scene, Michael turns the gun on his captors, kills the leader, Nicky grabs another gun and the pair shoot their way to safety. They rescue Steven, despite Michael initially wanting to leave him behind, believing him to only be a liability, and eventually reach safety. But what made this scene so brilliant was how there was no background music. The silence brought the tension to the forefront.

Although all three men escape, they don't all make it home. Michael and Steven return to America where we see how badly the war has changed them. In his escape from Vietnam, Steven is badly hurt and we next see him in rehabilitation after having lost his legs and one arm.  Steven refuses to come home as he no longer feels that he fits in. As for Michael, he is a completely broken man. He spurns his welcome home celebrations and has difficulty reconnecting to his old friends.

He goes deer-hunting again, but is unable to shoot a deer he had been tracking. Stan (John Cazale) snaps after being mocked once too often by Axle (Chuck Aspergen) and threatens to shoot him, but Michael snatches the revolver, removes all but one bullet, holds it to Stan's head and pulls the trigger on an empty chamber. The camaraderie and brotherhood that was present in the first film is now firmly in the past.

And where is Nicky? Steven reveals that somebody has been sending him money. Michael suspects this is Nicky who went AWOL and never returned home from Vietnam. He returns there to find him which is when we see the film's most heartbreaking scene. Nicky, now addicted to heroin, spends his days in a gambling den, playing Russian Roulette and sending his winnings home to Steven. He is now an empty shell of a man - no longer, the young man singing along to Frankie Valli. His eyes are dead and his skin is like chalk. 

Having made him a promise to not leave him behind, Michael desperately tries to convince Nicky to come home, but quickly realises that he is too far gone. Nicky is a dead a man walking and Walken is magnificent. His transformation is the most tragic as he is the only character who has truly transformed, whereas even before Vietnam, Michael is already a bit of a hard nut and Steven is already sensitive which is only exacerbated by their trauma, Nicky has pulled a full 180 from a happy, go-lucky, jovial steel-worker to a hollow man. 

Just when it seems that Michael has reached Nicky, he holds the gun to his head and sends the bullet into his skull. Once again the lack of background music highlights Michael's breaking heart, as well as the audience's. 

The Deer Hunter was Michael Cimino's breakthrough as a director and deservedly so, although it takes a while to get going, but when it does it is well worth the watch with some Oscar-worthy performances especially from De Niro and Walken. It's just a shame that Cimino was never able to repeat his early success.