Review of The Untouchables (1987) by Matt S — 02 Mar 2011

Eliot Ness (Kevin Costner) is an FBI agent who is determined to bring down the great mobster Al Capone (Robert De Niro). One day Ness meets a cop, Jim Malone (Sean Connery), who is willing to fight Capone with him. So they gather a personal team together and begin on their hunt to take down Capone. It proves to be a very difficult task and as things begin to get ugly, it seems that "The Untouchables" will have a lot more trouble taking in Capone than they had originally thought.

This is really a surprisingly great film in my opinion. I have never considered Brian DePalma to be a fantastic director. I must admit I am not entirely educated on all of his films, and I have not seen but a few, but his career really seemed to go down hill for me in his later years. He started off really well, and ended up filming the great "Scarface". But if you look at his career in the past 15 years or so, it is more sloppy than good. So for a little while now I had been reading up on The Untouchables, and it received a lot of critical acclaim, but I was still a little worried about it, mainly because of Kevin Costner being in the leading role. After he played in Dragonfly, which is probably in my top 10 least favorite movies of all time, I really lost my respect for Kevin Costner, so I was not sure whether or not to see this film or not. Well, it came on TV so I watched it, and I am really glad I did.

First off, the performances were great. Despite my fear of some of Costner's films, he really did a good job in this. He plays the part of Eliot Ness, the agent trying to catch Capone, and I was very surprised to find that he did a great job with it. This is easily one of my favorite of his films. Sean Connery was the best though, he has always been a funny actor to me, with that crazy voice and some of the strange and different roles he has played over his career. Especially with Darby O'Gill and the Little People, which always gives me a good laugh. However, I think it is quite safe to say that Sean Connery's performance in The Untouchables is easily his career's best. In fact, I really enjoyed everyone in this film. The Acting gets a grade A from me. Andy Garcia was even good in this film, and from what I have seen of him, that is not always a sure thing. And obviously Robert De Niro, my all time favorite actor, was brilliant as always. I don't think De Niro could give a bad performance if he tried. There honestly could not have been a better actor to play Al Capone, in my opinion that is.

The direction by Brian DePalma was brilliant. The actual story of Al Capone is honestly not that interesting (and I am sure anyone already knows how this film ends) but DePalma takes it and makes it an action pack film that will keep most viewers entertained. While the great screenplay will leave most movie buffs quite happy. I also enjoyed the musical score. At times it seemed a bit out of date for today's time, but there were some excellent songs in my opinion, and I really like good music in films. It just makes it all the better.

Overall, The Untouchables is not to be missed by any movie buff around. An ordinary film watcher will be plenty entertained by this movie, and the people who really care about films will enjoy this as well. Though I think some might not enjoy it as much as others, because it is certainly no Godfather. So I would suggest not comparing it to that. Because in the end when it comes to mob movies it doesn't get any better than The Godfather. But The Untouchables is still a well made mobster that many will love.