Word: palmas
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...Untouchables is not a realistic recreation of Chicago during Prohibition. Nor is it a typical effort from Brian De Palma, who has often put his awesome technique and his admirable sense of film history to trashy (Dressed to Kill) or trivial (Wise Guys) ends. Instead, it goes to that place that all films aspiring to greatness must attain: the country of myth, where all the figures must be larger and more vivid than life...
...might therefore join De Palma and Screenwriter David Mamet in a prayer that their epic work -- a masterpiece of idiomatic American moviemaking as well as a plangent commentary on its traditions -- will be spared from the literalists, complaining both that the gore is too real and that the characters are not real enough. Protect them as well from the wrath of the traditionalists, who resist the intrusion of originality on their passion for the endless restatement of stale generic conventions. Deliver them instead to the audience that will be galvanized, as the filmmakers were, by the chance to reimagine...
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...
What is true of 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...
...time after his death, Hollywood fell into a reverent silence on the subject of thrillers. The few bright children of Hitchcock's style, such as Brian De Palma (Dressed to Kill) and John Carpenter (Christine), were toiling in the fetid cellar of shock tactics; they took their cue from the gore and funereal fun of Psycho, not the narrative crisscrossing of Strangers on a Train. De Palma and Carpenter were only serving their audience. The music- video generation was disinclined to track the intricacies of a well-made plot. Those tame pleasures were best left to TV sleuths and their...