The Untouchables (1987)

Watched on 2023-10-12

Watched this with K "for history homework" (she's doing prohibition era US).

* The blood in this film is GREAT. Wine dark and very liquid. The Baseball bat scene!
* Kevin Costner is not great.
* The title music is great but during the film the soundtrack is often intrusive. This is not the case in the baby in the pram in the station scene which is super tense and GREAT.
* I miss nice long opening credit sequences, gives you a chance to settle down and get in the mood.
* Whoever's doing the dry cleaning for white suited hitman must have his work cut out (see item 1) his work cut out.
* The final bit where a newsman tells Eliot Ness that they're going to be repealing prohibition is a weird note in an other wise straightforward and unreflective film. It suggests there's a much more interesting film under the surface that neither DePalma of Costner is able to access (oddly reminded me of Robocop's ending (the best closing cut of a film ever)).
* The film seems pretty sure that the ends justify the means and that mindlessly upholding the law is the right thing to do.

Anyway, a solid, good looking film.

PS. on the IMDB page Patricia Clarkson's character, one of only two women I can remember being in the film (the other one is the mother struggling to get her pram up the station steps, do we even see her face?), is known only as Ness' Wife. Can a film fail the Bechdel test any harder?