Brian De Palma’s gangster thriller is rousing entertainment, with Sean Connery giving its moral debates some welcome impatience. Its enthusiasm for rough justice goes largely unchallenged, but the performances and the action make it worth that reservation.
The Untouchables is a thoroughly enjoyable gangster film with a rather easy conscience, and we recommend it with that reservation. Brian De Palma directs David Mamet’s screenplay as a contest in which the attraction of taking on a powerful criminal is never in doubt. The setting is Prohibition-era Chicago, and Eliot Ness is up against Al Capone. De Palma makes that fight exciting enough to carry the film. Mamet also asks how much the law should permit the men enforcing it.
Kevin Costner’s Ness gives the film a necessary steadiness, even when the role risks making goodness look dull. Robert De Niro’s Capone is much broader, a performance whose appetite for attention is entirely appropriate here. De Niro gives the criminal enough force to make Ness’s opposition matter, and Costner has the sense not to compete on the same terms. The contrast is easy to grasp and entertaining to watch. Neither role offers much uncertainty about which side we are meant to take.
Connery’s Jim Malone is the veteran policeman who gives the film its most persuasive human presence. We warmed to him because Connery makes Malone’s practical advice sound impatient, funny and worth listening to. He can put weight behind Mamet’s forceful dialogue without making every line sound prepared for a poster. Beside Costner’s upright Ness, his pragmatism also gives the actors something useful to disagree about. The film gains much of its energy from Malone’s conviction that he knows how the job ought to be done.
Stephen H. Burum’s cinematography gives the Prohibition setting a richness that makes the violence seem uglier. That polished look suits De Palma’s approach, giving the actors’ emphatic performances surroundings large enough to accommodate them. We would not ask for a drabber Chicago, even if the lavishness sometimes draws attention away from the people. Ennio Morricone’s score pushes the action hard, and its insistence suits a film that wants us thoroughly invested in its heroes. The music supplies much of the excitement, and De Palma is right to give it such prominence.
De Palma is a skilful organiser of violent action, although his pleasure in prolonging it can become ours only up to a point. Editors Gerald B. Greenberg and Bill Pankow help give the set pieces their force, but the extended suspense sometimes feels overworked. We start noticing how long a situation is being held and stop worrying quite so much about what happens next. These stretches need a firmer cut, even allowing for the director’s enjoyment of making us wait.
The more substantial reservation concerns Mamet’s treatment of the men carrying badges. A gangster thriller can choose its heroes plainly and still ask difficult questions about their behaviour. Here, the appeal of toughness repeatedly gets in the way of that questioning. Malone’s advice is compelling, but we would have liked someone to challenge it as persuasively as Connery delivers it. The script gives him considerably stronger material than it gives the objections to his methods.
At 119 minutes, the film has time to indulge its actors, and that is usually time well spent. Connery and De Niro make the familiar division between policemen and gangsters worth another evening, while De Palma provides enough force and confidence to make the broad storytelling work. See it for the actors and the action; expect to supply some of the objections yourself.
