The Untouchables

May not have much thematic depth, but it represents two hours of pure, exuberant entertainment – an epic gangster tale rendered on a grand scale. Read full review

Hollywood's latest big-budget, high-concept, mass-market reworking of material not entirely fresh, has more endings than Beethoven's Fifth, but it's also packed with surprises, not the least being that it's a smashing work. It's vulgar, violent, funny and sometimes breathtakingly beautiful. Read full review

Mamet's elegantly efficient script does not waste a word, and De Palma does not waste a shot. The result is a densely layered work moving with confident, compulsive energy. Read full review

The Untouchables is a beautifully crafted portrait of Prohibition-era Chicago. Read full review

This is a big, beautifully designed movie in which the filmmakers' intelligence is everywhere; it's the product of a special vision. And Brian De Palma continues to be good news from Hollywood. [3 June 1987, p.D1]

Ethics aside, the filmmaking by DePalma is stylish and alternates between shocking surprise and hold-your-breath quiet. Read full review

Superb performances, exquisite direction and that Ennio Morricone score create an authentic 1920s Chicago feel and a hugely entertaining crime drama. Read full review

Too often, the movie relies on the contrived situations endemic to gangster movies, rather than explore new routes to tell the story. Yet, there is an undeniable visual power that places The Untouchables in the class of The Godfather and Once Upon a Time in America. [3 June 1987, p.1D]

One triumph of The Untouchables is the way its operatic style accommodates larger-than-life performances. Read full review

Apart from Connery, the star of the film is Mamet's deadpan script, which obviously inspired one of the movie's baldest old-movie tributes. Read full review

De Palma's visual acuity tends to blur into mere gimmickry without the benefit of a resonant script. He got one in Carrie and another in Blow Out. Here, Mamet makes do with a text that is always shrewd but never intelligent. Still, when shwrewdness meets style, smoothing the curves and polishing the twists, the ride becomes a bonafide crowd-pleaser. The Untouchables is the cheering people's happy choice. [4 June 1987]

De Palma's Untouchables, like the TV series that inspired it, depends more on cliches than on artistic invention. Read full review

The movie soars highest when De Palma engages in the purely visual storytelling that he considers (rightly) his strongest suit as a director. [4 June 1987, p.29]

The real root of the movie's problems may lie in the fact that Mamet has identified with the men of principle and De Palma with the scoundrels -- in other words, with Capone instead of the eagle-scout Ness. Read full review

It's strange that in this somber inspection of moral fiber and what causes it to fray, De Palma couldn't have made his hero at least as interesting as his villain, and both of them at least as complicated as they were in life. Read full review

Steeped in De Palma's glorious violence and sinuous cinematography, but stripped of his tricky sensuality and his anarchic self-reflective wit, The Untouchables boils down to a lot of talk. Read full review