Review of Untouchables, The

Introduction

The Untouchables falls midway between Brian De Palma’s two stables of films: entertaining blockbusters (Mission Impossible) and the critically acclaimed (Carlito’s Way). Set in the Mob era of the 1930’s, Prohibition is enforced across America. Al Capone is the Mafia kingpin who gives people “what they want”, namely alcohol, but Eliot Ness has sworn to bring him down, and so sets about creating his elite team of ‘Untouchables’.

The Untouchables is very entertaining, with an unbelievable cast of the underrated Kevin Costner as Eliot Ness, Sean Connery, Andy Garcia and Robert De Niro in a cameo as Al Capone.

Video

Paramount, although notoriously stingy with the extras, always seem to do a great job with the visuals. The anamorphic print is excellent, with high detail present and little artifacts or grain. Some of the colours are a little muted, but that seems to be a director’s choice and not a fault of the remastering.

Audio

Again, Paramount’s 5.1 mix is very competent, and has good split rear effects and an adequate amount of bass. As for the soundtrack, Ennio Morricone’s score is somewhat unsubtle and you can consciously feel it manipulating your emotions…I prefer his Spaghetti Western work.

Features

Wow, Paramount have given us…nothing. Well, a trailer, but their extras policy is really a bit of a joke.

Conclusion

The entire cast is superb, with Sean Connery stealing the show, despite a very dodgy accent. Kevin Costner does his usual “I’m a Good Man with a Southern Twang” routine, basically playing a narrower version of Jim Garrison from JFK. Robert De Niro is woefully underused. But it seems great actors can be relied upon to turn up whenever Pulitzer Prize-winning screenwriter David Mamet does something: his script is strong and has quite a few quotable lines, although it does fall into contrived corn at times.

De Palma directs the action scenes very deftly, including an homage to ‘The Battleship Potemkin’ with his Odessa Steps sequence, which itself was spoofed in Naked Gun. The family scenes are handled less well.

Overall, I would recommend getting this disc due to the quality of the film, picture and soundtrack. The extras are, as expected, disappointing, but until paramount start tarting up their back catalogue this is the best version out. A good movie, well worth watching again.