The Untouchables has aged very badly... so badly, in fact, that Sean Connery as an Irishman is now the least chucklesome thing about it.
Containing one of the most jarringly inappropriate soundtracks ever, the incredibly 80s incidental music stands out against the 1930s-set plot. DePalma's best film is obviously Scarface, perhaps closely followed by the cult Phantom of the Paradise. But while Scarface introduced the world to a shouty version of Al Pacino that never went away thereafter, here "full scale" performances are replaced by pure ham, DeNiro included. Astonishingly Ennio Morricone was behind the music, suggesting that everyone involved had a bad day.
Oddly, there's never really any sense of danger in amongst the glib humour and very sanitised, Hollywood vision of the prohibition wars. Kevin Costner's Eliot Ness never really seems in any particular danger, and any detective work seems done via the easiest route possible. Ness wants to make some arrests, or shoot the bad guys? He does it, then on to the next scene. There's no real setbacks (other than the deaths of two of the Untouchables, obviously, though it's a little hard to take those parts seriously when Connery lives on for several minutes after being shot at least a dozen times by a machine gun).
Writer David Mamet was involved with three other movies starring DeNiro, with We're No Angels, Wag The Dog and Ronin on his ledger, all of which range from mediocre to pretty good. This was also DeNiro's fourth film with DePalma, after three little-seen movies in the late 60s/early 70s. Both had better collaborations elsewhere.
It's obvious that DePalma was stylistically trying to evoke westerns and noir, but having a stylistic conceit doesn't make it workable, whether intended or not... or maybe it's just that it's hard to take a gangster movie seriously when there's a wailing 80s sax behind it. A film like this needed to be gritty and realistic, not glossy homages to Eisenstein while what sounds like the theme tune to My Two Dads plays in the background.
The Untouchables, largely based on a series of fabricated situations, isn't a BAD film. But neither is it a particularly good one, either.
Containing one of the most jarringly inappropriate soundtracks ever, the incredibly 80s incidental music stands out against the 1930s-set plot. DePalma's best film is obviously Scarface, perhaps closely followed by the cult Phantom of the Paradise. But while Scarface introduced the world to a shouty version of Al Pacino that never went away thereafter, here "full scale" performances are replaced by pure ham, DeNiro included. Astonishingly Ennio Morricone was behind the music, suggesting that everyone involved had a bad day.
Oddly, there's never really any sense of danger in amongst the glib humour and very sanitised, Hollywood vision of the prohibition wars. Kevin Costner's Eliot Ness never really seems in any particular danger, and any detective work seems done via the easiest route possible. Ness wants to make some arrests, or shoot the bad guys? He does it, then on to the next scene. There's no real setbacks (other than the deaths of two of the Untouchables, obviously, though it's a little hard to take those parts seriously when Connery lives on for several minutes after being shot at least a dozen times by a machine gun).
Writer David Mamet was involved with three other movies starring DeNiro, with We're No Angels, Wag The Dog and Ronin on his ledger, all of which range from mediocre to pretty good. This was also DeNiro's fourth film with DePalma, after three little-seen movies in the late 60s/early 70s. Both had better collaborations elsewhere.
It's obvious that DePalma was stylistically trying to evoke westerns and noir, but having a stylistic conceit doesn't make it workable, whether intended or not... or maybe it's just that it's hard to take a gangster movie seriously when there's a wailing 80s sax behind it. A film like this needed to be gritty and realistic, not glossy homages to Eisenstein while what sounds like the theme tune to My Two Dads plays in the background.
The Untouchables, largely based on a series of fabricated situations, isn't a BAD film. But neither is it a particularly good one, either.