The Untouchables

Brian De Palma’s The Untouchables (1987) is a film that asks the burning question: is police brutality ever justified? It is when you’re dealing with the likes of Al Capone and Frank Nitti – gangsters that had no problem blowing up children and killing nebbish accountants to get what they wanted. The film doesn’t exactly adhere to historical fact opting instead to go with John Ford’s famous credo of printing the legend and in doing so raising the characters and their exploits to mythic status. De Palma’s adaptation of Eliot Ness’ 1957 memoir of the same name had all the makings of a powerhouse production destined for greatness. It featured a screenplay written by legendary playwright David Mamet, expert cinematographer Stephen H. Burum (Rumble Fish) was behind the camera, master composer Ennio Morricone was scoring the film, and Robert De Niro and Sean Connery were signed on to play larger-than-life characters. The result was an exciting, action-packed epic that helped revitalize De Palma’s struggling career (after the critical and commercial failure of Wise Guys) and earned Connery his first Academy Award.


It is 1930 and gangster Al Capone (Robert De Niro) controls most of the illegal business in Chicago with a ruthless, iron fist. After a ten-year old girl is killed in a gang-related incident, Federal Treasury Agent Eliot Ness (Kevin Costner) is brought in to clean up the city. His first attempt is an embarrassing failure so he tries a different approach. He decides to form his own task force of three men to help him take down Capone and his empire. He picks a veteran beat cop named Malone (Sean Connery), who knows the city and becomes Ness’ mentor. He also selects Stone (Andy Garcia), a cop fresh out of the academy and ace shot with a pistol. Rounding out the group is Wallace (Charles Martin Smith), a bookish FBI accountant who figures out a way to nail Capone. Together, they form an incorruptible group determined to bring Capone to justice.

De Palma and Mamet make it clear right from the get-go that The Untouchables isn’t going to be some half-assed, sanitized gangster film as they proceed to have Frank Nitti (Billy Drago) blow up a bar with a little girl in it. This shocking sequence, juxtaposed with Capone lying about not using violence to enforce his will, sets an all-bets-are-off tone as we get an idea of just how brutal life is in Chicago and how far Capone is willing to go to make a point. This is then contrasted with Eliot Ness’ blandy-McPlainWrap home life with a loving and dutiful wife (Patricia Clarkson) and cute-as-a-button child. We see just how far removed from Chicago Ness’ home life is and what a rude wake up call he will get when he starts working in the city.

Kevin Costner is wisely cast as the stiff, idealistic Ness. He’s the least interesting character and plays the role straight, trying not to go the obvious heroic route. His all-American looks and Gary Cooper-esque style are ideally suited for the role of the last honest man in the corrupt town (which Oliver Stone would also utilize in JFK). His Ness is as straight an arrow as they come which makes the character’s arc over the course of the film an interesting one. He goes from staunch upholder of the law to someone who has adopted Malone’s by-any-means-necessary philosophy.

This allows Connery to rightfully shine as the aging cop torn between riding out his remaining time and retire alive or making a difference with Ness and his crew. Unlike Ness, Malone has grown up on and worked the mean streets of Chicago. He understands that they are at war with Capone and must do whatever it takes to bust him and break up his empire because he will be just as ruthless. Upon the first meeting, Malone imparts a valuable lesson to Ness: “Make sure when you shift is over you go home alive.” It seems obvious but is an important one to know. It is also the reason why Malone initially turns down Ness’ offer to form the Untouchables. Connery shows what a once great actor can do with the right material and this results in a truly inspired performance — arguably the veteran actor’s last great one.

Rounding out his trilogy of memorable cameos in the 1980s (including Brazil and Angel Heart), Robert De Niro put on the pounds again (which he first and most famously did for Raging Bull) and transformed himself into Al Capone. Like Tony Montana in De Palma’s Scarface (1983), Capone is surrounded by luxury and opulence but is still just a cruel thug at heart. In the few scenes that he has, De Niro makes them count and it is a thrill to hear a great actor say Mamet’s tough-guy dialogue (listen to how he says the word, “enthusiasms,” in a scene). The actor clearly relishes the role and treats the dialogue like he’s enjoying a rich meal and each word is a juicy morsel that he savors.

The supporting roles feature some fantastic actors, chief among them Billy Drago who exudes just the right amount of oily menace as Nitti. For example, there is a scene where he cordially threatens Ness and his family. On the surface there is the appearance of civility but we know what is true intentions are the it doesn’t take Ness much time to figure it out by then Nitti is speeding off in his car – he’s made his point. Drago doesn’t get many lines or a lot of screen time but makes the most of the what he’s given, making a fine addition to De Palma’s roster of cinematic sociopaths.

Speaking of Mamet’s dialogue, it crackles and pops with intensity and provides many of the film’s classic scenes, perhaps none more memorable than Malone’s famous speech to Ness where he tells him how to get Capone. “He pulls a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue. That’s the Chicago way.” Sean Connery delivers this speech with the passion and conviction that rightfully earned him an Oscar. The other scene of classic Mamet dialogue is Capone’s infamous dinner table monologue where he talks about teamwork before braining a hapless flunky with a baseball bat for not being a part of the “team.”

Brian De Palma’s stylish direction is perfect for this epic story: long, uninterrupted takes, slow motion and excellent compositions within the widescreen format. He may well be one of the greatest practioners of this aspect ratio. Just look at a simple set-up in the scene where Malone takes Ness to a church and lays it all out for how they’re going to get Capone. Both men take up most of the foreground occupying either side of the screen. The camera is low looking up at them so that we also see part of the beautifully ornate church ceiling. It is this kind of shot that would be totally destroyed when shown pan and scanned on television. Then there is the much-celebrated train station shoot-out, which was a shameless homage to a famous sequence in the legendary film, Battleship Potemkin (1925). It’s a bravura sequence that is beautifully orchestrated by De Palma as he builds the tension leading up to the shoot-up for what seems like an unbearable eternity. The entire sequence is a brilliant lesson in editing and camerawork.

Although, De Palma does go a little over-the-top (even for him) with the Ness-Nitti show down at the end, which features the director’s obligatory homage to Alfred Hitchcock. There is also silly bit of business where we see two old cops duking it in a rainy alleyway as Connery and veteran character actor Richard Bradford laughably beat each other up in a scene that I could’ve done without. Also, Malone’s prolonged death scene drags on for what feels like an eternity but these are really minor flaws in an otherwise unimpeachable stone cold classic as De Palma does his best to distract us from these histrionics with giallo lighting in the Connery fight scene and suspenseful point-of-view steadicam work in the death scene.

In 1984, producer Art Linson met with Paramount Studio’s president Ned Tanen about adapting The Untouchables television series into a film. Tanen liked the idea but Linson did not want to do a sequel, a remake or a parody. He wanted “to create a big-scale movie about mythical American heroes.” Linson needed a screenwriter and thought of David Mamet, fresh from just having won a Pulitzer Prize for his Broadway play Glengarry Glen Ross. He met with Mamet and the writer agreed to do the film. The screenwriter was a native of Chicago and something of a gangster history buff. He envisioned a story about “the old gunfighter and the young gunfighter … It occurred to me, what happens if this young innocent, who’s charged with defending the law but only understands that in an abstract way, meets an old disenchanted veteran, the caretaker of the law, soured at the end of his career because of the corruption in the city?”

Mamet asked Paramount to show him two episodes of the original series and he liked them but felt that “there was nothing I could use in the movie.” Mamet wrote an original story after realizing that the real events – Capone being caught for tax evasion – were not that dramatic. Mamet created the character of Malone and gave Ness a family (he did not have one in real life). After eight months, Brian De Palma was approached to direct by Linson after Mamet wrote the third draft of the script. The director liked that the script was more about the characters and did not see it as a gangster film but more like The Magnificent Seven (1960). He felt that the project was “different from anything I’ve done in the past, because it’s a traditional Americana picture, like a John Ford picture.” He, Linson and Mamet worked together on it with De Palma emphasizing the Capone character more. According to De Palma, the film “reflects upon the incredible pressure we place on our police by not equipping them to adequately fight criminals. Why are we surprised that some of them go overboard?”

For the role of Eliot Ness, Linson and De Palma initially considered William Hurt and Harrison Ford, but, according to Linson, they wanted “someone with the right combination of naiveté, earnestness and strength.” They ended up casting Kevin Costner who wanted to do the film because it was so different from the television series and Ness “has to ask for help. It’s the more modern notion that a smart man takes a step back sometimes – that to be a hero you don’t have to be Rambo.” For Jimmy Malone, the filmmakers wanted Sean Connery but assumed that he would not want to play a supporting role and take a pay cut. However, Connery was drawn to the project because of Mamet’s script and the chance to work with Robert De Niro. He ended up signing on for a percentage of the profits. For the role of Al Capone, De Palma wanted De Niro. Paramount initially balked at the actor’s asking price of $1.5 million but relented.

The principal actors rehearsed together for a full week and Connery tried to remain in character even when the cast was relaxing. By the time principal photography began, whole scenes had been blocked and unworkable ideas rejected. A rapport between the actors playing the Untouchables had also been established, which definitely shows in the film. In preparation for the film, De Niro put on 30 pounds between the end of his Broadway run in Cuba and His Teddy Bear and his days of filming scheduled at the end of the 70-day production schedule. He analyzed old Movietone newsreels in order to get Capone’s voice, movements and mannerisms. On an interesting note, the famous scene in the church between Ness and Malone as originally written, took place on a street, but Connery suggested it take place in a church – the only place left in the city where they could speak freely.

Principal photography started in mid-August 1986 and utilized over 25 separate locations in Chicago with the border raid sequence shot on the Old Hardy Bridge spanning the Missouri River because of its period look. The train station shoot-out cost $200,000 to light because extra light was needed to shoot the sequence in slow motion. It took six days to shoot the scene, which cost an additional $100,000. Not surprisingly, staging this sequence like the one in Battleship Potemkin was De Palma’s idea. The budget escalated from $17 million to $24 million thanks to the cost of production designer Patrizia von Brandenstein transforming an entire block of LaSalle Street in Chicago into the 1930s complete with 125 costumed extras and 60 period cars.

The Untouchables received mixed reviews from critics back in the day and is best summed up by Pauline Kael, a fan of De Palma’s work, who wrote, “It's not a great movie; it's too banal, too morally comfortable - the script is too obvious. But it's a great audience movie - a wonderful potboiler. It's a rouser. The architectural remnants of the era (including solid traces of Louis Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright) have been refurbished to provide a swaggering showcase for the legend.” In his review for The New York Times, Vincent Canby praised Sean Connery’s performance: “In any other movie, this, too, would be a pretty ordinary role but, as written by Mr. Mamet, directed by Mr. De Palma and played by Mr. Connery, Jim Malone becomes something like the original on which all similar roles were patterned.” Time magazine’s Richard Schickel wrote, “Such riches abound in this film, but it is as parable, not parody, that it grips us. The Untouchables all begin as archetypes of American goodness. And they do triumph over evil; they send Capone to prison. But the cost is death or loss of innocence, for it is only by adapting crime's methods that they can defeat it.”

Roger Ebert gave the film two-and-a-half stars and was disappointed by De Niro’s performance: “All of the movie's Capone segments seem cut off from the rest of the story; they're like regal set-pieces, dropped in from time to time … There isn't a glimmer of a notion of what made this man tick, this Al Capone who was such an organizational genius that he founded an industry and became a millionaire while still a young man.” The Washington Post’s Hal Hinson wrote, “But you're too much aware of the director's manipulations; his virtuosity become oppressive. Our only interest really is in whether the filmmaker can sustain the feat. It's the kind of stunt that turns filmmaking into a kind of sideshow. It's stunning but in the way that great jugglers or magicians can sometimes be stunning. But it's not art, and, at least in the case of The Untouchables, it's only marginally entertaining.”

The production design for The Untouchables is fantastic, especially the opulence of Capone’s headquarters with Morricone’s score resembling a 1930s riff on the music from De Palma’s Scarface. This film is one of those rare big-budget, star-studded blockbusters that actually works. All of the right elements came together at just the right time and place and resulted in an incredibly entertaining motion picture. The Untouchables shows what a master filmmaker like De Palma can do with a director-for-hire paycheck movie. He may not be making a personal statement with this film but he still gives it his all in terms of style and virtuoso camerawork. This film certainly set a high standard for period gangster films, casting a long shadow over future endeavors like Michael Mann’s Public Enemies (2009) and the HBO T.V. series Boardwalk Empire.

Also, check out Mr. Peel's excellent look at the film over at his blog, and also John Kenneth Muir's top notch analysis of De Palma's epic over at his blog.
 

Deep Cover

While movie star-studded prestige films like Traffic (2000) tackle the war on drugs on an ambitious scale, sometimes it takes a slick B-movie like Deep Cover (1992) to get right to the heart of the issue. Directed by veteran character actor and filmmaker Bill Duke, the film attempted to capitalize on the success of edgy urban films like New Jack City (1991) and shed light on how drug addiction and drug dealing was destroying African American neighborhoods in major cities throughout the United States. Deep Cover dares to be different by showing how flawed and corrupt law enforcement is in dealing with the drug problem, following the paper trail all the way up the ladder to the upper echelons of our government, all the while delivering the requisite thrills of the police thriller. The end result is a B-movie with a brain.

The film’s set-up is an old chestnut: Russell Stevens, Jr. (Laurence Fishburne) is a Cincinnati police officer recruited by a smug bureaucrat named Carver (Charles Martin Smith) to go undercover and stay under for a prolonged period of time, becoming a drug dealer in order to set up and bust other dealers. The key is that Russell must deeply immerse himself in the role in order to survive because other officers failed when they tried to go back to their regular lives and blew their cover on the street. Carver sells the gig to Russell by telling him, “all your faults will become virtues.” Russell won’t blow his cover because he exhibits antisocial tendencies and has no family. When he was a child, Russell saw his father (Glynn Turman) die before his very eyes, gunned down after robbing a liquor store. Duke captures this flashback in rather lurid fashion as the gunshot that ends the father’s life splashes his blood all over the passenger window of the car his boy watches helplessly from. To further hammer the point home, Duke includes a shot of the dying father giving his son blood-soaked money.

Russell is sent to Los Angeles and tasked with the mission to knock out the big drug network. Via Carver, the film lays out the drug hierarchy in the U.S. in fascinating detail. Russell’s target is Felix Barbosa (Gregory Sierra), the guy who supplies the street level dealers. Above him is Anton Gallegos, the top importer on the west coast, responsible for 40% of the drugs in L.A. He is able to do so because of his uncle, Hector Guzman, a Latin-American politician and “a self-promoting duplicitous greaseball,” according to Carver. Russell starts off as a small-time dealer and soon finds a way in to Barbosa through a man named Eddie (played with wonderful twitchy desperation by Roger Guenveur Smith), a “crazy, good-natured, desperate asshole with a life expectancy of about a half an hour.” Through Eddie, Russell meets and befriends David Jason (Jeff Goldblum), an uptight upper class attorney that moonlights as a dealer and gets his drugs directly from Barbosa but dreams of bankrolling his own designer drug. Russell also crosses paths with an upstanding veteran cop by the name of Taft (Clarence Williams III), a righteous man that makes it his life’s mission to take the drug dealer down.

Deep Cover started as a collaboration between producer-writer Henry Bean and producer Pierre David. They had worked together previously on the police corruption thriller Internal Affairs (1990). The two men envisioned the project as a fairly standard crime thriller about an undercover cop. However, former Paramount Pictures production executive Gary Lucchesi suggested that they revise their protagonist to be African-American because, at the time, the studio was impressed with the success of Spike Lee’s films. Bean liked the idea and felt that the “details of blackness gave the character a particularity and resonance that it otherwise didn’t have.”

Screenwriter Michael Tolkin was brought in to do the first draft with Bean taking over subsequent revisions. However, Bean ran into problems when it came to writing dialogue reflecting how African-Americans felt about “somebody like the Goldblum character with his assumptions of middle-class privilege.” Once Duke and the actors came on board, they helped with these aspects of the screenplay. When the revised script was delivered to Paramount in the winter of 1990, the studio passed and placed the project in turnaround.

Bean and David took the script to every major studio and were turned down by them all. Some executives suggested that the lead role be re-written with a white person in mind. Then, New Jack City (1991) had a strong opening in March 1991 and New Line Cinema, who has also passed on Deep Cover, reconsidered. The studio felt that if the project were also given a modestly low budget (below $8 million), there would be relatively little risk and the potential for high returns. Then, John Singleton’s Boyz N the Hood (1991) came out and was successful enough that New Line saw the same kind of crossover potential for Deep Cover.

Deep Cover was filmed in the fall of 1991 in order to capitalize on the success of Boyz N the Hood which was made for $6 million and went on to gross approximately $58 million. It also helped other African-American filmmakers get their films made, like Matty Rich’s Straight Out of Brooklyn (1991), Ernest Dickerson’s Juice (1992), and Mario Van Peeble’s New Jack City. At the time, Bill Duke said that he was not interested in making “’black’ movies. I’m interested in making movies that reflect reality as I perceive it.” He got his start acting in popular films like Commando (1985) and Predator (1987) and cut his teeth directing episodes of television programs as diverse as Cagney & Lacey, Hill Street Blues and Miami Vice. He was one of the first directors considered and he liked the script and its protagonist. Duke and Bean wanted the film to appeal to a mainstream audience and cast as multiracial as possible despite resistance from the studio who pushed for African-American actors.

The lead role was first offered to Denzel Washington, who turned it down, and then to Wesley Snipes and Laurence Fishburne. The latter had just come off Boyz N the Hood and was the veteran of more than 20 films. Duke liked the actor and felt that he could play “somebody who the audience could not only identify with but also believe in.” Fishburne saw his character in the tradition of Al Pacino in Serpico (1973) or Andy Garcia in Internal Affairs and was attracted to the notion that it “offered me wider psychological possibilities to play than a lot of the parts that I’ve been offered in the past.” He also saw the film as one that “offers what I hope can be a role model for black youth who have been bombarded with negative images for so long.” To research for the role and to bond with co-star Jeff Goldblum, Fishburne rode around in a Los Angeles Police Department squad car that was unexpectedly called to a homicide.

Russell narrates his own story with that great, deep-sounding melodical voice of Laurence Fishburne’s, delivered without emotion. At times, it’s almost like he’s rapping the voiceover narration which begins, “So gather round as I run it down and unravel my pedigree.” Another gem: “The great thing about life on the street is you know how it’s going to be. It’s always the same. It’s always getting worse.” Deep Cover re-imagines hard-boiled noir narration as a rap. Naturally, Russell breaks the golden rule of drug dealing as established in Scarface (1983): don’t get high on your own supply. He starts to take bigger and bigger risks including interfering in an important drug bust. Fishburne does an excellent job of showing his character losing himself in his drug dealing persona. Once he kills a rival dealer, it’s a short journey to doing drugs. Russell soon becomes seduced by the lifestyle and does what he we swore he would never do: be like his father. Russell’s epiphany comes when he realizes that everything he’s doing, all the undercover work, has been for nothing. His disillusionment provokes an indulgence in all the vices he swore he would never do. However, Russell never loses control completely. He’s too smart for that. Fishburne is a gifted actor and has no problem conveying his character’s intelligence.

Jeff Goldblum has built a career on playing quirky characters in films as diverse as The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai (1984) and Into the Night (1985). With Deep Cover, he showed some serious dramatic chops. David starts off as one of the actor’s freewheeling characters who are always with a quip at the ready but he takes a dramatic turn in a scene where Barbosa puts him in his place. Afterwards, at home, he tells his wife that Barbosa doesn’t respect him and his eyes seem on the verge of welling up with tears. His wife tells him that he has a loving family and what more does he want. Duke cuts to a shot of an eerily malevolent-looking David staring off into space and he responds, “I want my cake and eat it, too.” Gone is the slick, cocky lawyer and all that’s left is an emotionless psychopath which Goldblum conveys with a lifeless look in his eyes. It’s impressive to see the transformation in his character once he goes off the deep end.

Gregory Sierra brings a considerable amount of intensity to his role as evident in the scene where he disciplines Eddie. The more nervous Eddie gets, the calmer Barbosa is, but there’s the undeniable menace in Sierra’s eyes. When the explosion of violence does come it’s brutal and ugly. Duke makes sure we see the reactions of horror in both David and Russell’s eyes. Duke gives Deep Cover occasional stylistic flourishes, like employing old school wipes to transition from scene to scene, or a shot of Russell walking the streets of L.A. with a series of staccato jump cuts that also move the camera closer in on him, all timed to atmospheric hip hop music. These stylistic touches give the film an energy and vitality that is exciting to watch.

Deep Cover received generally positive reviews from critics. Roger Ebert gave it three-and-a-half stars out of four and praised the voice-over narration as "poetic and colorful. That's part of the process elevating the story from the mundane to the mythic.” In her review for The New York Times, Janet Maslin praised the "quietly commanding Larry Fishburne and the wry Jeff Goldblum, who make an interestingly offbeat team.” The Chicago Reader’s Jonathan Rosenbaum wrote, "What emerges is a powerhouse thriller full of surprises, original touches, and rare political lucidity.” Entertainment Weekly gave the film a “B-“ rating and Owen Gleiberman wrote, "The movie peels away every layer of hope, revealing a red-hot core of nihilistic despair. Fishburne, with his hair-trigger line readings and deadly reptilian gaze, conveys the controlled desperation of someone watching his own faith unravel. And Goldblum reveals a new dimension of comic rottishness.” However, the Washington Post’s Desson Howe wrote, “with Boyz N the Hood, Fishburne broke through to the big time. Here, his acting career takes a step backwards.”

If Deep Cover has one glaring flaw, it’s the wish fulfillment ending that wraps things up a little too neatly as Russell sticks it to The Man. It’s as if the filmmakers want their cake and eat it, too, to quote Goldblum’s character in the film. However, Duke’s film is not afraid to name names in the sense that it exposes the corruption that exists within our government. On the one hand, it wages an expensive and never-ending war on drugs and yet it develops relationships with politicians in other countries that can be the source for the drugs that are brought into the U.S. It’s a complicated relationship but one that Deep Cover attempts to make understandable by filtering it through the prism of a B-movie crime aesthetic.