Rapid Response: The Untouchables

When I first saw “The Untouchables,” I thought it was highly overrated for just being kind of lame and stupid. It seemed cheesy, and so it is. Brian De Palma is clearly making a modern day crime drama in the fashion of an Old Hollywood gangster movie. But now I think it’s overrated because it’s so plainly obvious that he’s doing that.

The problem with De Palma is that he’s a leech. He makes “homages” of classic American films, but he lacks his own personal style. His aesthetic is big and bold, but its without a defined pacing or tone. This is loosely true of “Scarface” too, a film that thrives based on its charismatic lead performance from Al Pacino, and one he also dedicates to Howard Hawks.

“The Untouchables” is the story of how Eliot Ness (Kevin Costner) and his small team of vigilante cops took down the Chicago organized crime lord Al Capone (Robert De Niro). But rather than take a truly interesting approach to this historical story, De Palma concocts an intentionally adorable and token back story for our hero and a series of big budget action set pieces that are bloody, but look clearly shot on movie sets, have corny dialogue and gigantic musical swells in a score by Ennio Morricone designed to place the viewer back in 1930 when this movie is set and could’ve been made.

He even chooses to blanketly ripoff “The Battleship Potemkin’s” famous Odessa Steps sequence when Ness is waiting for Capone’s bookkeeper by the stairs leading down to the trains. The whole segment is so horribly contrived (is there really no better way for that woman to get up the stairs other than take her luggage up ONE step, THEN pull her baby up in the stroller ONE step and THEN move her bags just ONE more step?) that it completely detracts from the original story at hand. It’s as though he’s making a bad, old fashioned movie, but then telling us it’s okay because he’s winking to the camera. YOU’RE WINKING TOO MUCH.

The film has some other problems too. Costner, who is one of cinema’s biggest love him/hate him actors, gives an especially bland and stilted performance here. As for De Niro as Capone, it sounds like perfect casting, but then it’s too perfect. De Niro acts as though he’s doing an impression of himself. Sean Connery is really the most charismatic, but his Oscar victory for this part is undeserved.

I can’t quite figure out why this movie is so popular. I always said about “Scarface” that the original film with Paul Muni from 1932 is twice as good and half as long as De Palma’s. I imagine that would be true here too, but then Howard Hawks never made “The Untouchables.”

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