Movie of the Week: The Untouchables

  

 

    Movie of the Week (7/21/13-7/27/13): As we all know the 1920's and the early 1930's were all about prohibition and smuggling in alcohol. The smuggling of booze was mainly a gangster thing, every major city had a select number of gangsters who illegally smuggled in booze anyway they knew how. The Untouchables is about just that, it follows a treasury agent who recruits a couple of trustworthy Chicago cops to help him take down Al Capone. First it was just about catching him with booze, then getting him on tax evasion, but in the end it ends up being personal.
    The first thing this film has is an A-list cast that gives us very powerful performances all around. We have Kevin Costner as Eliot Ness, the agent who wants to put Al Capone away, who gives us a great performance, although probably not his best, but it is up there. We also get an electrified performance from Sean Connery as Jim Malone, who helps and becomes close friends with Ness, he also won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his performance. There is also Andy Garcia as Agent George Stone aka Giuseppe Petri who probably is the worst in the film, but he still manages to do well because of the talent around him, and he was young at the time. Finally, we have the king of Gangster films, Robert De Niro as Al Capone himself who again gives us a wonderful performance.
    Several scenes in the film are very intense and were written and shot well. One scene includes Malone picking up a dead bad guy to make one of the live ones talk who doesn't know that his friend is dead. Malone then puts his pistol in the dead guys mouth and pulls the trigger, the live one then talks. As the late Roger Ebert said, it is a scene that is very intense which the rest of the film lacks, well I would have to disagree with the great film critic on that last part. There are a couple shootouts that are well choreographed and intense, a short elevator scene that is intense and possibly hard to watch, a scene where the bad guys gets the best of the good guys in Malone's apartment that is tough to watch, and a very intense and long climax that might make you squeeze your armrest. So, despite Ebert not caring too much for the film, it has several very intense scenes thanks to the writers.
    The film also has some very good editing and sound editing and mixing along with great costumes that match the period very well. It all mixes great together for a very good period film, especially the sound, it really is very good and sounds great with the clear cut editing. Along with it sounding great the film also looks very good, especially on Blu-ray, the backdrop in mainly 1930's Chicago so the cinematographer had a lot to work with, also of course with help from the set designer who brought the period to life very well. It all works great together as one of the better looking films set in the 1930's Chicago.
    One last thing that made this film very good was the amazing musical score that was nominated for an Oscar. The music is very fast paced in several scenes that make it extremely intense or at times frightening when it gets that slow cold feeling, and you will know it. Okay one more thing, director Brian De Palma also did a good job as well, although it is quite different from his previous Gangster film Scarface, he still did a good job at telling the story through a lot of great camera movement. Of course he had help with his great crew and cast, but he still did a good job, I just think he would not have been the best director to do it. Despite that this is still a great Gangster film that shows 1930's Chicago in great detail through costume design and set pieces, it looks and sounds great, has a wonderful intense score, and a fantastic cast who does a wonderful job. This isn't the best Gangster film, clearly, but it is ranked fairly high on the list.                                                                                                     3.5/4 Stars