The Untouchables - Teamwork, The Trash Cinema Way

Sep

8

The Untouchables - Teamwork, The Trash Cinema Way

≡ Category: Action, Drama, Essential, Movie Reviews, United States |
≅ Written by: Michael Kydonieus

Country: United States
Genre: Drama/Action
Director: Brian De Palma
Year: 2003

Rating:

TRASH CINEMA ESSENTIAL MOVIE

The Untouchables is a terrific piece of entertainment from start to finish. But is it trash? You bet — highly polished trash by some of the best craftsmen in the business, but it’s still trash.

Why do I say that? Because when given the choice to enlighten or entertain, at every juncture the filmmakers made The Untouchable the Trash Cinema way. What do I mean by that?

Let’s start with the score by Ennio Morricone, which announces within the first minute of the movie that The Untouchables is going to be boldly melodramatic. The Untouchables theme is very stylized and not particularly reminiscent of music of the 1930s, the period in which the movie takes place. Against the steady beat of a snare drum, we get piano riffs in the bass clef doubled with an orchestra. The spectral melody is essayed by a sickly harmonica.

The first image of The Untouchables is a static, blatantly artificial overhead view of Al Capone getting a shave and a manicure while reporters wait for him deferentially. Then again, let’s face it, if you’re going for realism, you don’t hire Brian De Palma to direct your movie. The movie’s look is almost architectural. Rows of identical cars are lined up for overhead shots. Many scenes are composed with large amounts of open space. Steadicam shots abound. For one sequence, DePalma extensively quotes from the silent movie classic The Battleship Potempkin.

Together with Morricone’s music, it all conjures up a mythic sense of the battle between Eliot Ness and Al Capone.

Although these choices are bold, they makes sense given the script by David Mamet. Mamet beautifully constructed script doesn’t even attempt historical accuracy but aims instead for rousing dramatic effect. He includes many events which never happened, but which should have, if you know what I mean.

Mamet has also made some interesting choices with character, too. Instead of making Eliot Ness a tough, humorless lawman, he’s done something counterintuitive and made Ness an utter square, given to exhortations like “Let’s do some good, men.” The effect is simultaneously comic and has us fearing for Ness, who seems to be in over his head.

Mamet’s conception of Al Capone is as a king regally holding court, taking time out now and then to mete out brutal punishments to his subordinates. His speeches, especially the one on teamwork, are a thing of beauty.

The wonderful characters in the script are brought to life by perfect casting.

Robert Deniro gives a stellar comic performance as Capone, but it’s not just another one of his gangster portrayals. Capone was a second generation Italian, whose parents were from Salerno, rather than Sicily. Deniro gives Capone a jolly, gregarious veneer over barely concealed viciousness.

Eliot Ness is the perfect role for Kevin Costner, who embodies the character’s squareness without breaking a sweat. Charles Martin Smith makes goofy accountant Oscar Wallace utterly lovable. Sean Connery is his usual virile and charismatic self.

And Billy Drago — that guy gives you the chills as Capone’s enforcer. His face alone is freaky, but when you add the white suit and his sickly harmonica theme, Drago really creeps you out. On the basis of his role in The Untouchables, I expected to see a lot more of Billy Drago, but he ended up getting hired for dreck like China White and Hero and the Terror. I suppose he was lucky to get steady gigs, but Billy Drago deserved higher profile stuff.

In spite of all the top notch work from this crew of professionals, I’m a little surprised that it all gells. Sometimes the overtly theatrical style of Brian De Palma can be sickening, especially when it’s employed in narratives which concern violence against women, doubly so when these scenarios are fact-based, such as the execrable Casualties of War (see my post Casualties of War - DePalma Blows His Wad). But it can’t be denied that the unconventionally larger than life choices of the filmmaking team, especially the director, writer, composer, and production designer, end up working beautifully in The Untouchables. They took a risk that paid off in spades, making The Untouchables a genuine crowd pleaser.