The Untouchables is a 1987 American crime film directed by Brian De Palma, produced by Art Linson and written by David Mamet. It stars Kevin Costner, Charles Martin Smith, Andy García, Robert De Niro and Sean Connery. Set in 1930 Chicago, the film follows Eliot Ness (Costner) as he forms the Untouchables team to bring Al Capone (De Niro) to justice during Prohibition. It is the fourth film on which De Niro and De Palma collaborated, after Greetings (1968, De Niro's first lead in a feature role), The Wedding Party (1969) and Hi, Mom! (1970).
The screenplay is loosely based on Ness's and Oscar Fraley's 1957 book The Untouchables and the real-life events on which it is based, although most of its plot is fictionalized. The Academy Award-nominated, Grammy Award-winning score is composed by Ennio Morricone and features period music by Duke Ellington.
The Untouchables premiered on June 2, 1987, in New York City, and went into general release by Paramount Pictures on June 3, 1987, in the United States. The film grossed $187 million worldwide and received generally positive reviews from critics. It was nominated for four Academy Awards; Connery won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, as well as the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor – Motion Picture.
Plot
In 1930, during Prohibition, the notorious gangland boss Al Capone supplies illegal liquor and controls most of Chicago. Bureau of Prohibition agent Eliot Ness has been tasked with halting Capone's activities by hitting a warehouse with crates shipped from Canada, but his first attempt at a liquor raid fails due to corrupt policemen alerting Capone.
He soon encounters veteran Irish-American officer James Malone, who opposes the rampant corruption and offers to help Ness, suggesting that they find a man from the police academy who is not yet under Capone's influence and still believes in the idealistic aspects of law enforcement. They recruit Italian-American trainee George Stone (born Giuseppe Petri) for his superior marksmanship and integrity. Joined by accountant Oscar Wallace, they successfully raid a Capone liquor warehouse and start to gain positive publicity, with the press dubbing them The Untouchables. During an organizational dinner team meeting, Capone kills the warehouse manager with a baseball bat to warn his other subordinates.
Discovering that Capone has not filed an income tax return for four years, Wallace suggests trying to build a tax evasion case against him, as Capone's network keeps him well insulated from his other crimes. Crooked alderman John O'Shea offers Ness a bribe to drop his investigation, but Ness refuses. After Capone's enforcer Frank Nitti threatens Ness' family, Ness immediately moves his pregnant wife Catherine and their daughter to a safe house. In a subsequent raid on the Canadian border with the assistance of some Mounties, Ness and his team intercept an incoming liquor shipment, killing several gangsters and capturing a Capone bookkeeper named George, who ends up agreeing to help them testify against his employer. Back in Chicago, Nitti, dressed as a policeman, murders Wallace and George in the elevator of the police station and leaves a taunting message for Ness. Thereupon Ness confronts Capone at the Lexington Hotel after the murders, but Malone intervenes, urging Ness to focus on persuading the district attorney not to dismiss the charges against Capone.
Realizing that police chief Mike Dorsett betrayed Wallace and George earlier on, Malone forces Dorsett to reveal where Capone's accountant Walter Payne is hiding, then tells Ness to meet him to plan their next move. After Malone returns home, Capone's henchmen attack him. He chases one away with a shotgun, but Nitti ambushes him with a Thompson submachine gun before retreating. Ness and Stone arrive to find Malone mortally wounded, but before dying he manages to tell them which train Payne will take to leave town.
As Ness and Stone await Payne's arrival at Chicago Union Station, Ness notices a young mother with two suitcases and her baby in a carriage laboriously climbing the lobby steps. Ness ultimately decides to assist her, but the gangsters guarding Payne appear just as Ness and the woman reach the top of the stairs, and a bloody shootout occurs. Although outnumbered, Ness and Stone manage to capture Payne alive and kill all the gangsters, keeping both the mother and child unharmed.
When Payne testifies at Capone's trial, Ness observes that Capone appears strangely calm. He then sees Nitti is wearing a gun in the courtroom and has a bailiff remove him. Outside the courtroom, Ness searches Nitti and finds a note from Chicago Mayor William Hale Thompson that effectively permits him to carry the weapon. Ness is frustrated until he discovers that Nitti also has a matchbook with Malone's address written inside his coat, which causes Ness to realize that Nitti is Malone's killer. In a panic, Nitti brandishes his gun and shoots the bailiff before fleeing to the courthouse roof. Ness eventually apprehends him and prepares to take him in custody, but then Nitti insults the memory of Malone and gloats that he will escape conviction for the murder; this enrages Ness and instead he tosses Nitti off the roof to his death, avenging both Wallace and Malone.
Back in the courtroom, Stone gives Ness a list – taken from Nitti's coat – which shows that the jurors in the trial are all on Capone's payroll, thereby explaining Capone's calm and overconfident demeanor earlier on. Ness secretly persuades the judge to switch Capone's jury with one hearing an unrelated divorce case, and the judge relents after Ness tricks him into believing that his name is on Capone's payroll as well. This prompts Capone's lawyer to enter a guilty plea against Capone's wishes; as Capone furiously objects in a violent outburst, Ness victoriously taunts him by repeating Malone's motto: "Never stop fighting until the fight is done. Here endeth the lesson". Capone is ultimately convicted of tax evasion and sentenced to 11 years in prison.
On the day of Capone's sentencing, Ness closes up his office and meets up with Stone to part ways with him; he gives Malone's St. Jude medallion and callbox key to Stone as a farewell present. As Ness leaves the police station, a reporter asks him what he will do after the probable repeal of Prohibition; Ness replies "I think I'll have a drink" before walking away.
Cast
Background
Development Ned Tanen spent years trying to obtain the rights to Eliot Ness' life story while working as an executive at Universal Pictures in the 1970s and the 1980s. After becoming head of motion picture productions at Paramount Pictures, which owned the film and television rights to Ness' memoir The Untouchables, Tanen immediately hired Art Linson to begin producing a film adaptation. Linson was not interested in adapting the ABC television series based on Ness's book, and sought to create a more "serious, authentic" depiction of Ness' career in Chicago. Linson hired playwright David Mamet to compose an original script for the film. Most of Mamet's screenplay was used, but director Brian De Palma slightly rewrote some scenes during production in order to incorporate new locations. For instance, the scene paying homage to the Potemkin Stairs from Battleship Potemkin (1925) was moved from a hospital to Chicago Union Station. A month after the film was released, De Palma downplayed his own role on the script:
Being a writer myself, I don't like to take credit for things I didn't do. I didn't develop this script. David [Mamet] used some of my ideas and he didn't use some of them. I looked upon it more clinically, as a piece of material that has to be shaped, with certain scenes here or there. But as for the moral dimension, that's more or less the conception of the script, and I just implemented it with my skills – which are well developed. It's good to walk in somebody else's shoes for a while. You get out of your own obsessions; you are in the service of somebody else's vision, and that's a great discipline for a director.The character of the IRS agent Oscar Wallace was partially based on Frank J. Wilson, the IRS criminal investigator who spent years keeping tabs on Capone's financial dealings before laying charges. Unlike Wallace, Wilson was not killed during the investigation, and was later involved in the Lindbergh kidnapping case.
Casting Linson and De Palma wanted to have a more tender portrayal of Ness than Robert Stack's "tough" portrayal from the 1950s television series, seeking to portray him as a "vulnerable family man". De Palma initially wanted Don Johnson to portray Eliot Ness. Mickey Rourke, Jeff Bridges, William Hurt, Harrison Ford and Michael Douglas also turned down the role. A 1985 issue of Variety announced the casting of Jack Nicholson as Ness, but he was ultimately replaced by Kevin Costner. In preparing for his role as Ness, Kevin Costner met with former FBI agent and Untouchable Al "Wallpaper" Wolff at his home in Lincolnwood for historical context and to learn about Ness' mannerisms.
Robert De Niro was De Palma's first choice to play Al Capone, but it was uncertain if he could appear in the film because of his appearance in the Broadway play Cuba and his Teddy Bear. He also wanted to gain about to play Capone; according to De Palma, De Niro was "very concerned about the shape of his face for the part." De Palma met with Bob Hoskins to discuss the role in case De Niro could not appear. When De Niro took the part, De Palma mailed Hoskins a check for £20,000 with a "Thank You" note, which prompted Hoskins to call up De Palma and ask him if there were any more films he didn't want him to be in. Gene Hackman and Marlon Brando were also considered as options in case both De Niro and Hoskins proved unable to perform the role. De Niro's research for the role of Capone included reading about him and watching historical footage. He had one extra scene written for his character, and contacted Capone's original tailors to have identical suits and silk underwear made for him. He was paid $2 million for the role.
Patricia Clarkson was cast to play Ness' wife, Catherine, in her debut film role. A young John Barrowman appears uncredited as a street person.
Filming Principal photography began on August 18, 1986, in Chicago, Illinois, where Ness' story begins with him recruiting his Untouchables team with the intent of taking down Capone.
Filming locations included the Rookery Building (Ness' police headquarters), LaSalle Street, the DuSable Bridge, Chicago Cultural Center (the opera house, the courthouse lobby, and the rooftop chase), the Blackstone Hotel (the mob banquet), Our Lady of Sorrows Basilica (the church), and Chicago Union Station (the railway shootout). The Lexington Hotel, Capone's residence, had been closed since 1980, so the location was portrayed through three locations in the film: the exterior and lower lobby was filmed at Roosevelt University, while Capone's suite was the upper foyer of the Chicago Theatre. A West Side warehouse served as a soundstage.
In August 1986, Paramount Pictures contacted Garry Wunderwald of the Montana Film Commissioner's Office to find a 1930s-period bridge to portray a border crossing between the United States and Canada. Wunderwald suggested the Hardy Bridge, which crosses the Missouri River near the small town of Cascade, southwest of Great Falls.