| Overall Grade: |
A |
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| Story: |
A |
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| Acting: |
A+ |
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| Direction: |
A |
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| Visuals: |
A- |
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Brian De Palma's greatest achievement
by Adam (movies profile)
Mar 14, 2008
6
of
7 people found this review helpful
It is said that as Brian De Palma wastes his time making strange movies that are soon to be highly criticized, he then makes a movie that might not only be decent, but also outstanding. "The Untouchables", a mob movie about 1930's Chicago, is a film that De Palma made in 1987. This film is superb. It's De Palma's best work yet.
Kevin Costner is federal agent Eliot Ness, who's trying his best to stop the flow of illegal booze in Chicago. The problem is that if he wants to succeed, he'll have to bring down head mobster Al Capone (Robert De Niro). Right now, Ness is not doing well, until he meets cop Jimmy Malone (Sean Connery), who teaches him a few basics and helps Ness recruit two others to help: George Stone (Andy Garcia) and Oscar Wallace (Charles Martin Smith). The feud begins!
One of the best directed shots in the movie is when mobsters in a train station shoot each other in cut-time as a carrage carrying a toddler rolls backwards down some steps. There are many other well-directed action shots, too, like when Ness and his team fight some of Capone's guys at a bridge somewhere in the Canadian border.
The A+ I gave to the acting belongs only to two of the actors in this film. One of them is Sean Connery, because his performance is almost totally real (Connery also won an Academy Award for this role). The other actor who gets an A+ is Robert De Niro, because you can always trust him to act tremendously, and he role as Al Capone, like Sean Connery's performance, seems very real. Kevin Costner, Andy Garcia, and Charles Martin Smith would all probably desreve an A-.
When I first saw "The Untouchables", I was about to give it an A- because I thought that it needed just one more action scene. But I don't think that anymore. The musical score by Ennio Morricone is the freakiest score I've heard since Danny Elfman's score in "Beetlejuice". Sean Connery, who's my favorite actor, delivers one of his best performances here. And when you think about it, the movie has got a lot of action scenes. And, ugh, this movie is packed with BLOOD. Blood that's just about as graphic as that in "The Godfather". Ugh.
Yep, this is a glorious movie. One of the hottest mob movies out there. And definately Brian De Palma's greatest achievement ever. |
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