Businessman and philanthropist Al Capone was born 125 years ago today. A beloved figure in Chicago and a noted family man, Capone was an early victim of the IRS and he spent what should have been the best years of his life locked away in a federal prison.
Many films have been inspired by Capone’s story and many notable actors have played him. In 1987’s The Untouchables, Robert De Niro brought Capone to life and, in a memorable scene, he showed how to deal with an employee who was not carrying his weight.
As some of our regular readers undoubtedly know, I am involved in hosting a few weekly live tweets on twitter and occasionally Mastodon. I host #FridayNightFlix every Friday, I co-host #ScarySocial on Saturday, and I am one of the five hosts of Mastodon’s #MondayActionMovie! Every week, we get together. We watch a movie. We snark our way through it.
Tonight, for #MondayActionMovie, the film will be 2011’s Killer Elite! Selected and hosted by Sweet Emmy Cat, this movie features an all-star cast and failed to make back its budget so you know it has to be good!
Following #MondayActionMovie, Brad and Sierra will be hosting the #MondayMuggers live tweet. We will be watching 1987’s The Untouchables! The film, which features a look at why Chicago is the worst city ever, is on Prime!
For those of you keeping track, that’s two De Niro films in one night!
It should make for a night of fun viewing and I invite all of you to join in. If you want to join the live tweets, just hop onto Mastodon, pull up Killer Elite on YouTube, start the movie at 8 pm et, and use the #MondayActionMovie hashtag! Then, at 10 pm et, switch over to Twitter and Prime, start TheUntouchables, and use the #MondayMuggers hashtag! The live tweet community is a friendly group and welcoming of newcomers so don’t be shy.
4 Shots From 4 Films is just what it says it is, 4 shots from 4 of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 4 Shots From 4 Films lets the visuals do the talking!
Today, we wish a happy 80th birthday to director Brian De Palma with….
Since I reviewed The Untouchables yesterday, it only seems fit that it’s main title theme should be today’s song of the day. From Ennio Morricone, it’s The Strength of the Righteous!
“Let’s do some good!” Eliot Ness shouts as he and a platoon of Chicago cops raid what they believe is a bootlegger’s warehouse.
That line right there tells you everything that you need to know about the 1987 film, The Untouchables. In real life, Eliot Ness was known to be an honest member of law enforcement (which did make him a bit of a rarity in 1920s Chicago) but he was also considered to be something of a self-promoter, someone who tried to leverage his momentary fame into an unsuccessful political career. In the 50s, after Ness had lost most of his money due to a series of bad investments and his own alcoholism, Ness wrote a book about his efforts to take down Al Capone in Chicago. That book was called The Untouchables and though Ness died of a heart attack shortly before it was published, it still proved popular enough to not only rehabilitate Ness’s heroic image but also to inspire both a television series and the movie that I’m currently reviewing.
None of that is to say that Ness didn’t play a role in Al Capone’s downfall. He did, though it’s since been argued that Ness had little to do with actual tax evasion case that led to Capone going to prison. It’s just that, in real life, Eliot Ness was a complicated human being, one who had his flaws. In The Untouchables, Kevin Costner plays him as a beacon of midwestern integrity, a Gary Cooper-type who has found himself in the very corrupt city of Chicago in the very corrupt decade of the 1920s. The film version of Eliot Ness has no flaws, beyond his naive belief that everyone is as determined to “do some good” as he is.
So, The Untouchables may not be historically accurate but it’s still an entertaining film. It’s less concerned with the reality of Eliot Ness’s life and more about the mythology that has risen up around the roaring 20s. Everything about the film is big and operatic. In the role of Al Capone, Robert De Niro sneers through every scene with the self-satisfaction of a tyrant looking over the kingdom that he’s just conquered. While Costner’s Ness tells everyone to do some good, De Niro’s Capone uses a baseball bat to keep his underlings in line. He goes to the opera and cries until he’s told that one of Ness’s men has been killed. Then a big grin spreads out across his face. It’s not exactly a subtle performance but then again, The Untouchables is not exactly a subtle movie. It’s not designed to be a film that makes you think about whether or not prohibition was a good law. Instead, everything is bigger-than-life. It’s a film that takes place in a dream world that appears to have sprung from mix of old movies and American mythology.
In real life, Ness had ten agents working under him. They were all selected because they were considered to be honest lawmen and they were nicknamed The Untouchables after it was announced to the press that Ness had refused a bribe from one of Capone’s men. In the film, Ness only has three men working underneath him and they’re all recognizable types. Sean Connery won an Oscar for playing Jmmy Malone, the crusty old beat cop who teaches Ness about the Chicago Way. A young and incredibly hot Andy Garcia plays George Stone, the youngest of the Untouchables. Best of all is Charles Martin Smith, cast as Oscar Wallace, a mild-mannered accountant who first suggests that Capone must be cheating on his taxes. There’s a great scene in which the Untouchables intercept a liquor shipment on the Canadian border, all while riding horses. Sitting on the back of his galloping horse and trying not to fall off, both Oscar Wallace and the actor playing him appear to be having the time of their lives. For Oscar (and probably for much of the audience), it’s a fantasy come to life, a chance to “do some good.”
The Untouchables was directed by Brian DePalma and his stylish approach to the material is perfect for the film’s story. DePalma fills the film with references to other movies, some from the gangster genre and some not. (In one of the film’s most famous sequence, DePalma reimagines Battleship Potemkin‘s massacre on The Odessa Steps as a shoot-out between Eliot Ness and Capone’s men.) DePalma’s kinetic style reminds us that The Untouchables is less about history and more about how we imagine history. In reality, Capone was succeeded by Frank Nitti and The Chicago Outfit continued to thrive even in Capone’s absence. In the film, Nitti (played by Billy Drago) brags about killing one of the Untouchables and, as a result, is tossed off the roof of a courthouse by Eliot Ness. It’s not historically accurate but it makes for a crowd-pleasing scene.
Big, operatic, and always entertaining, The Untouchables is an offer that you can’t refuse.
Everyone knows who Al Capone was but few people remember Frank Nitti. Nicknamed “The Enforcer,” Nitti was Capone’s right-hand man. When Big Al was sent to federal prison for not paying his taxes, Nitti was the one who kept things going in Chicago. While Al was losing his mind in Florida, Nitti was the one who moved the Chicago Outfit away from prostitution and into the labor racket. Today, if anyone remembers Frank Nitti, it is probably because of the scene in Brian DePalma’s The Untouchables where Eliot Ness tosses him off of a building. In real life, Nitti survived the Untouchable era just to become one of the few crime bosses to die by his own hand. In 1943, With the feds closing in on him, Nitti shot himself in a Chicago rail yard.
Frank Nitti: The Enforcer was a made-for-TV movie that told the story of Nitti’s life. Broadcast a year after The Untouchables, Nitti is, in many ways, a direct refutation of DePalma’s film. Eliot Ness never appears in the movie and is dismissed, by special prosecutor Hugh Kelly (Michael Moriarty), as being a publicity seeker. Al Capone (Vincent Guastaferro) is ruthless and resents being called Scarface but he never hits anyone with a baseball bat. In this movie, the only real villains are the Irish cops who harass Nitti (played by Anthony LaPaglia, in his American film debut) and Chicago’s ambitious mayor, Anton Cermak (Bruce Kirby). Cermak orders a corrupt cop (Mike Starr) to shoot Nitti and the film implies that Cermak’s subsequent assassination was payback.
Though it sometimes tries too hard to portray its title character as just being a salt of the Earth family man who also happened to be the biggest mob boss in the country, Nitti is a good gangster film. Michael Moriarty’s performance is a forerunner to his work on Law & Order and Trini Alvarado is lovely as Nitti’s wife. Anthony LaPaglia gives a good performance in the lead role, with the film’s portrayal of Nitti as a ruthless but reluctant mob boss predating The Sopranos by a decade.
It’s time for another edition of Let’s Second Guess the Academy! This time, we’re taking a second look at the race for Best Picture of 1987.
Can you remember which film won Best Picture for 1987? Don’t feel bad if you can’t because Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Last Emperor is one of the lesser known Oscar winners. The film’s relative obscurity leads to one natural question: was it truly the best film released in 1987?
Or should the Oscar have gone to one of the other films nominated — Broadcast News, Hope and Glory, Fatal Attraction, or Moonstruck?
Let your voice be heard by voting below!
After voting for which nominated film you think should have won, give some thought to some of the 1987 films that were not nominated. Was Moonstruck truly a better film than Near Dark or Full Metal jacket? Ask yourself what would have happened if The Last Emperor hadn’t been released in the United States or what if Fatal Attraction hadn’t been a huge box office smash. What if none of the five best picture nominees had been eligible to be nominated in 1987? Which five films would you have nominated in their place?
Let us know by voting below. As always, you can vote for up to five alternative nominees and write-ins are accepted!
Everyone knows who Al Capone was but few people remember Frank Nitti. Nicknamed “The Enforcer,” Nitti was Capone’s right-hand man. When Big Al was sent to federal prison for not paying his taxes, Nitti was the one who kept things going in Chicago. While Al was losing his mind in Florida, Nitti was the one who moved the Chicago Outfit away from prostitution and into the labor racket. Today, if anyone remembers Frank Nitti, it is probably because of the scene in Brian DePalma’s The Untouchables where Eliot Ness tosses him off of a building. In real life, Nitti survived the Untouchable era just to become one of the few crime bosses to die by his own hand. In 1943, With the feds closing in on him, Nitti shot himself in a Chicago rail yard.
Through the Shattered Lens 