Hammerman Ikon

Hammerman Ikon Film Guide

The Untouchables
1987
****
Director: Brian De Palma
Cast: Kevin Costner, Sean Connery, Charles Martin Smith, Robert De Niro, Andy Garcia, Billy Drago, Patricia Clarkson, Richard Bradford

Brian De Palma's assured and supremely entertaining crime drama is set in 1930s Chicago, where Treasury agent Eliot Ness puts together a small team of uncorruptible agents to uphold prohibition and put Al Capone behind bars. David Mamet's screenplay is loosely based on a book by Oscar Fraley and Eliot Ness. The Academy Award winning Sean Connery as a veteran cop and Robert De Niro as Al Capone are both terrific. The climactic railway station showdown (and Potemkin homage) is its own little gem. Ennio Morricone wrote the moving score.