Brian De Palma’s The Untouchables is a Prohibition-era crime picture that knows what it wants to be: a clean, well-built machine about a few honest men in a city that has none to spare. It premiered in New York City on June 2, 1987, and Paramount put it into general release the next day. The tagline asks the question the film runs on — “What are you prepared to do?” — and the answer, for better and worse, is: not quite enough to make it great.
Trailer, via YouTube Movies.
Eliot Ness and the Warehouse Raid
Kevin Costner plays Eliot Ness, a Bureau of Prohibition agent assigned to halt Al Capone’s liquor operation. His first raid, on a warehouse holding crates shipped from Canada, collapses because corrupt policemen tip off Capone. It is a good opening. Ness is earnest, outmatched, and alone.
He isn’t alone for long. He meets James Malone, a veteran Irish-American officer sick of the corruption, who offers to help. Malone’s idea is simple: find a police academy man not yet in Capone’s pocket. They take George Stone, born Giuseppe Petri, for his shooting and his integrity. Accountant Oscar Wallace joins them. A successful raid on a Capone warehouse earns them a nickname from the press: The Untouchables.
Robert De Niro, a Baseball Bat, and a Tax Case
Robert De Niro’s Al Capone is the film’s engine. At an organizational dinner, Capone beats the warehouse manager to death with a baseball bat to warn his subordinates. It is the scene everyone remembers, and it earns the memory.
The plot turns on paperwork. Wallace notes that Capone has not filed an income tax return for four years and proposes a tax evasion case — the only charge that reaches a man insulated from his other crimes. Crooked alderman John O’Shea offers Ness a bribe to drop it. Ness refuses. Nitti threatens Ness’ family; Ness moves his pregnant wife Catherine and their daughter to a safe house. A raid on the Canadian border, with Mounties helping, nets a Capone bookkeeper named George who agrees to testify.
Sean Connery Steals the Picture
Sean Connery won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for Malone, and the Golden Globe for the same role. Watch the film and the awards make sense. Costner is the spine, but Connery is the blood.
De Niro was De Palma’s first choice for Capone, though his Broadway run in Cuba and His Teddy Bear made his availability uncertain. De Niro wanted to gain about 30 pounds. He read about Capone, watched historical footage, had one extra scene written for his character, and contacted Capone’s original tailors for identical suits and silk underwear. He was paid $2 million.
The casting history is its own entertainment. Here is how the lead role nearly went:
- De Palma first wanted Don Johnson as Ness.
- Mickey Rourke, Jeff Bridges, William Hurt, Harrison Ford and Michael Douglas all turned it down.
- A 1985 Variety issue announced Jack Nicholson as Ness.
- Costner got the part.
Bob Hoskins was the backup for Capone. When De Niro took the role, De Palma mailed Hoskins a £20,000 check with a “Thank You” note — prompting Hoskins to call and ask whether there were any more films De Palma didn’t want him in.
Ennio Morricone and the Chicago Machine
Ennio Morricone’s score was nominated for an Academy Award and won a Grammy, and it carries period music by Duke Ellington. It does work the script doesn’t: it makes 1930 Chicago feel like a place with a pulse.
David Mamet’s screenplay is loosely based on Ness and Oscar Fraley’s 1957 book and the real events behind it, though most of the plot is fictionalized. That’s fine. The film is not a history lesson. It is a morality play with tommy guns.
The middle sags. The tax-evasion turn is clever but talky, and the film loses momentum whenever De Niro leaves the frame. De Palma and producer Art Linson wanted a more tender Ness than Robert Stack’s “tough” take from the 1950s television series — a “vulnerable family man.” Costner delivers that, but vulnerability is not interior life, and Ness stays the least interesting person in his own movie.
The Untouchables grossed $187 million worldwide and drew generally positive reviews. It earned four Academy Award nominations. It is a strong film with a soft middle, and it knows its own question better than it answers it.
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