Brian De Palma
Gli Intoccabili

It is undeniable, but the three most well-known films of the great Brian De Palma are surely Scarface, The Untouchables, and Carlito's Way. I have already argued several times why Scarface does not entirely convince me and why Carlito's Way is a great film. Now I will focus on one of the director's greatest successes, released in theaters in 1987, "The Untouchables".

The film presents us with Prohibition-era Chicago, dominated by the mobster Al Capone (Robert De Niro) with his illegal alcohol dealings. Opposing this "evil" figure is the "good" one represented by Treasury agent Eliot Ness (played by a not too convincing Kevin Costner). This agent will bring together some characters to create a team tasked with opposing the "evil."

An opus balancing between the gangster movie and the dramatic genre, between the crime film and the thriller. In this feature, De Palma manages to cleverly combine all his signature elements without disrupting its flow. Filled with references, (from Kubrick to Eisenstein, from Hitchcock to Argento, with interludes here and there recalling even his previous works), the director creates a work that adeptly shifts from genre to genre, benefiting greatly from the film's pace. A cinematic piece where once again, we have the perpetual good/evil dualism that ultimately encapsulates the very essence of the film itself. The good is also evil because it does not hesitate to use violence to achieve its goals. An evil that fights with the same weapons as the good, in a crescendo of violence culminating in two splendid "shootout" sequences: the famous one on the train station staircase and the one where Ness confronts one of Capone's many hitmen atop a building.

Over the years, this film has often been accused of being not credible enough in its reconstruction and at the same time, not De Palma enough. Analyzing the work in-depth, The Untouchables turns out to be perhaps the work where the director injects all his major signature elements. From the cited references to the continuous search for complicated shots, from deliberately spectacular shootouts to the prominent use of violence. Furthermore, The Untouchables goes beyond the very concept of a gangster movie. Not only the portrayal of a classically violent and mafia-ridden environment as in the genre tradition, but also an exploration of the boundaries of this environment. Not just criminals against criminals (see Scarface and Carlito's Way) but especially mobsters against the law. This reinterpretation is what we found a few years ago in The Departed by another master of the genre, Martin Scorsese.

In this scenario, where denunciations of the reality of the time, which is also our present reality (take away alcohol, insert drugs), are made violently, The Untouchables shows us how everything is indeed a paradox. A paradox shown to us from the end, when even those who fought for justice succumb to vice. For this and other reasons, in my humble opinion, The Untouchables cannot be considered the best work of the American director. Firstly, because sometimes the coherence driving the story forward is lost and also (and especially) because in several scenes (besides the slowness) emerges a superficiality that weighs on the strength of the depiction. Indeed, there are too many parts where the film seems almost to advance by inertia without links between events and without adequate explanations.

A venial sin in a film that entered the collective memory for an extraordinary performance by Robert De Niro, fattened and with a perfect evil grin for the character he played. A film that can surely be appreciated for an excellent basic idea supported by the splendid 1930s Chicago location.

The Untouchables makes us understand how in reality, despite good intentions and nice words, everything is still "talk and a badge".

1988 Oscar for Best Supporting Actor (Sean Connery).