The Untouchables (1987)
Directed by Brian De Palma
Elliot Ness, an ambitious prohibition agent, is determined to take down Al Capone. In order to achieve this goal, he forms a group given the nickname “The Untouchables”.
6 connections found
View:
6 films that influenced The Untouchables
What critics say influenced The Untouchables
Director Brian De Palma gives you an esoteric tribute to "Battleship Potemkin" -- a Russian film of the 1920s -- as well as a dip into the pulp-lore of the old Warner Brothers gangster flicks.
And the only moment where he does—the notorious (and supposedly improvised on set) Battleship Potemkin homage—is rendered utterly facile and irrelevant as a result.
De Palma directs with effortless panache, most memorably in a pistol-packing homage to the Odessa Steps sequence from " Battleship Potemkin " on the staircase of Chicago's Grand Station.
Some scenes, like the baby carriage scene (famously lifted from Battleship Potemkin) and Connery's taking-charge scenes, come alive, but the film mostly revels in nostalgia and feels numb.
The most memorable and controversial sequence is easily the climactic shootout in Chicago�s Union Station, partially because it features De Palma�s trademark extended slow-motion in an incredibly complex choreography of gun fighting and nervous tension, but mostly because it has the audacity to evoke Sergei Eisenstein�s classic Odessa Steps sequence from Battleship Potemkin.
Borrowing from the famous Odessa Steps sequence from Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin, De Palma crafts one of the most riveting 10-minute set pieces in modern cinema, elevating the tension by stages until it is nearly unbearable.
No, Frank Nitti did not meet death with a "Vertigo"-like Hitchcock flair.
The irony should not be lost on the fact that David Fincher's Mank, a dramatized feature about the writing of one of Orson Welles's greatest films, Citizen Kane (1941), is being released by the streaming giant Netflix.
Francis Coppola used it in "The Godfather" films to get at something essential about the place of crime in American culture.
In a scene cribbed from the baptismal murders in "The Godfather," he orders an assassination while crying ethnically at the opera.
Advertisement
As the dead-central character of "The Big Chill," only Costner's cuff links showed and even they were more interesting than Eliot Ness.
Mr. Costner, whose scenes were cut out of ''The Big Chill'' and who had small parts in ''American Flyers'' and ''Silverado,'' went into ''The Untouchables'' as a vaguely familiar face.
Adding immeasurably to these scenes is the romantic, soul-satisfying music by Ennio Morricone ("Days of Heaven," "Once Upon a Time in America").