The Untouchables (1987)

 

De uovervindelige

It may just be me who is not that much into gangster movies and that I am deeply unfair, but “The Untouchables” feels to me a bit flat. A beautifully wrapped package, but the thing inside is the same gift I got last year and the year before. Can you be disappointed with something that looks so great?

It is 1930 and Al Capone (Robert De Niro) is the de facto king of Chicago, largely fuelled by the illegal import and sale of liquor during the prohibition. Eliot Ness (Kevin Costner) of the Treasury department is tasked with doing something about this problem. This is not easy, because Capone and his money are everywhere, even within the police department, so Ness learns the hard way that he must work outside the normal law enforcement system. Ness forms a small group around him consisting of veteran policeman and mentor Jimmy Malone (Sean Connery), young sharpshooter George Stone (Andy Garcia), whose real name is Guiseppe and thus closer to the Italian community in Chicago than the others, and accountant Oscar Wallace (Charles Martin Smith).

Wallace, who is intended as the somewhat comical character, early on mumbles a lot about Capone’s tax irregularities, but Ness is far more focussed on Capone’s crimes of violence. The team, soon called The Untouchables because they refuse bribe, focuses on busting Capones operations which certainly catches Capone’s attention and a war between the two starts. Capone is not shy of any sort of imitation. It is only when a raid yields a book with the accounting of Capone’s business transactions that Ness realizes Capone can be nailed for this. At that point however, Capone means serious business, the sort that comes out of the end of a gun.

There is no discussing the quality of the execution of this movie. Everything has been very carefully done in the best way possible. The recreation of 1930 Chicago is flawless, down to minute details. The filming is done in a brownish colour tone that emulates the black and white image we have of the era while remaining in colour. The tracking shots and steady-cam shots are flawlessly executed, giving a presence and first-person impression that is very convincing. The soundtrack by Ennio Morricone is as usual excellent, with bits of contemporary music by Duke Ellington thrown in. Most importantly, the casting is genius. Robert De Niro as Capone is exactly spot on. He has for a generation been the incarnation of a mafia boss. Costner as Ness works very well and Connery as Malone is another match in heaven. Yet it is Garcia and Smith that I particularly noticed. Their roles may be smaller, but they were exactly right for those parts.

SPOILER ALERT!

When I am still grumping about “The Untouchables” it is because of the structure of the movie, the plot if you will. This is a plot that very much tries to play it safe. We can pretty much predict every step of the way and any attempt at a plot twist is either something we have seen before or something that is not taken far enough. We get a hint of uncomfortability when Capone through his henchmen start threatening Ness family, but the story never follows up on that. Wallace and Malone die, but they are sacrificable and the conclusion in the courtroom almost feel anticlimactic.

When reading up on the movie I learned that practically everything in the movie except the characters were invented and even some of those were not real. This is obviously one of the more dramatic events in American history, yet the scriptwriters found it necessary to completely rewrite event to conform with Hollywood templates. I am not so naive that I do not know there always is a level of adaption, but it seems to me that in this case a potentially very interesting and exciting story is reduced to a cliché in anticipation of what the audience wants to see. The point is not that Ness never killed Nitti (Billy Drago). The point is that he does it in the movie to conform to the predictable plot.

Again, I have to mention that I am not big on gangster movies in the first place. I find it very hard to get into them. At least in this case we are not supposed to sympathize with the gangsters, but the flatness of the “good” side makes it equally difficult to get close to them. A fan of the genre may see it differently. Still, and no denying, this is a very pretty movie.