The Untouchables (1987)

The Untouchables is the rare gangster film that feels both mythic and muscular, a big-screen morality tale shot with Brian De Palma’s bold, operatic flair and paced like a tightening vise. Kevin Costner’s Eliot Ness gives you a clean-lined center to hold onto, while Sean Connery steals scenes with warmth, grit, and a lived-in authority that makes every line land, and Robert De Niro turns Capone into a smiling nightmare you can’t look away from. David Mamet’s script crackles with hard-edged wit and purpose, and the craftsmanship—from the period detail to the set pieces—has that old-Hollywood sweep without losing its street-level tension. It is violent and occasionally brutal, so it’s not for the squeamish, but if you want a thrilling, stylish classic about integrity under pressure, this one earns its reputation.

The Untouchables is aiming to be a big, old-school crime saga about lawmen versus legend, and it delivers that in bold, crowd-pleasing strokes with De Palma’s slick set pieces and a few genuinely electric performances (Connery in particular). The trade-off is that it often plays like a polished greatest-hits reel of gangster-movie moments, leaning on familiar archetypes and convenient turns rather than digging into real moral complexity. The violence is intense and sometimes feels designed to impress more than illuminate, so if you’re sensitive to brutal scenes or want a more nuanced historical take, this may wear thin. If you like operatic, sharply staged thrillers with clear heroes and villains, it’s a solid ride; if you need originality and depth over style, you might end up unimpressed.