Word: nessness
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...much violence," murmurs Eliot Ness (Kevin Costner) as he cleans out his desk at the end of The Untouchables...
...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...
Similarly, "Wrong In The Charts" uses low vocal distortion to offset some Beatle-esque harmonies, and "San Quentin, CA" muddles a country ballad with a batch of terrific grunge. The best tune here is "Loch Ness Monster," an outlandish love song directed at Scotland's most famous anachronistic ichthyosaurus, more commonly known as "Nessie...