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Sunday, May 28, 2023

THE UNTOUCHABLES (1987)

Purposeful nonsense as history/powerhouse entertainment as popcorn movies go, but with Brian De Palma’s usual default mode of insincerity, just the thing for so much of his output, limiting any real possibilities for depth or even much suspense in this Prohibition saga of Treasury Agent Elliot Ness & his little band of risk-taking aides going after big bad Al Capone & Co. in a tintype 1930s Chicago.*  At its considerable best whenever Sean Connery’s on screen as a tough old ‘beat’ cop who knows the territory (except when scripter David Mamet needs him to not know to keep the plot in motion), with star-making turns from Kevin Costner’s Ness & supporting cop Andy Garcia (both groomed to impossibly lux standards), less so from nerdy Charles Martin Smith doing a Taxman Cometh turn.  Set in a spit-polished Chicago past that might be a Greenfield Village exhibit, De Palma actually shows his best form out of town when the boys suddenly go all Western on us.  (Did no one ask how those city boys would ‘sat’ a horse?)  Fun to compare Robert De Niro’s Al Capone to Lee J. Cobb in PARTY GIRL/’58.  (Cobb’s lethal baseball bat is souvenir-sized gold-plated; De Niro's a Louisville Slugger.  Progress!)  Even more fun to notice how De Niro’s mobster & his top accountant might be auditioning to play a certain former president and convicted financial officer Allen Weisselberg.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID/LINK:  *Di Palma modi operandi sees him repurpose Sergei Eisenstein’s ‘Odessa Steps’ from POTEMKIN/’25 (the baby carriage clumping down the stairs) in a Chicago train station as the big set piece that tees up the final courtroom showdown.  Painfully overcooked, it deflates suspense in context yet plays brilliantly as an excerpt in a highlight reel.  Alas, Di Palma not a ‘kill your darlings’ kind of guy, seeing the trees and missing the forest.  (Di Palma’s excuse is that he had to ‘wing it’ when a more expensive idea got cut at the last minute.)  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2018/10/bronenosets-potemkin-battleship.html

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