Review of The Untouchables (1987) by Theo M — 06 Aug 2016

Ambitious, flawed gangster film.

The Untouchables might be said to be less than the sum of its parts. Certain of those parts are very good indeed: Sean Connery gives an Oscar winning performance as a street-wise Irish-American cop, Robert De Niro is unforgettable as Al Capone (though he's not actually on screen that much), the atmosphere of Prohibition-era Chicago is elaborately and convincingly realized, and certain of the cinematic set-pieces, like the justly famous midnight shoot-out in Chicago's train station, are about as good as they can be. But against this, Kevin Costner's performance as Eliot Ness is wooden, the scenes with his family seem too goody-goody, as if the film were straining to make a point of the decent values he's defending, and, with the exception of Connery's character, it's hard to feel much empathy with either the good guys or the bad guys. All in all, an ambitious film which ends up being a bravura piece of film making but a good, not great, gangster movie. Rated R for occasional language and lots of graphic violence. Available in various DVD issues, including a recent Blu-Ray; I saw it on the 2004 Paramount standard DVD Collector's Edition, and I thought the DVD quality was very good.