Word: nesses
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...precious friends and values, fulfilled the classic destiny of a movie hero. Garbed in a mysterious, often near comical purity, he has arrived in a profoundly corrupted community and, by imposing his eerie conscientiousness on it, awakened its conscience. Now the city is at peace, in part because Ness has taken upon himself some of its wickedness. Or, as he puts it, "I have become what I beheld, and I am content that I have done right...
...Ness is even more radically redefined. Mamet says he sees him as a lone town tamer of Western legend. De Palma has evoked the name of John Ford to suggest the classic qualities he was aiming for. And Costner has something of the grave beauty Gary Cooper used to bring to these roles...
...Connery's work applies to the whole movie. Mamet's elegantly efficient script does not waste a word, and De Palma does not waste a shot. The result is a densely layered work moving with confident, compulsive energy. One sequence is set in Chicago's Union Station, where Ness and Stone must take a key witness from the Mob's protective custody. Into their stakeout blunders a mother maneuvering a baby carriage up a staircase. What delirious conflict between Ness the lawman and Ness the family man, as he tries to protect the infant and simultaneously conduct a shoot...
...perhaps, the implicit lesson of almost all action films. But most of them have permitted their heroes to reclaim their honor at the end. The good guys are allowed to think their fall from purity and motive was a temporary aberration. There is no such escape for Eliot Ness. Despite its driving pace, style and wit, this film's pervasive mood is a strange and haunting sadness. The Untouchables is, of all things, touching...
...show. The Untouchables, a brilliant film by Brian De Palma, reimagines the era of Eliot Ness and Al Capone...