"You wanna get Capone? Here's how you get him. He pulls a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue! That's the Chicago way! And that's how you get Capone!"
Few old TV shows have been brought to the big screen with such 茅lan as Brian De Palma's majestic adaptation of the 60s small screen classic The Untouchables. The film that made Kevin Costner a star, won Sean Connery his only Academy Award to date, and gave Bob Hoskins one of his biggest ever pay cheques. (Originally cast as crime boss Al Capone, Hoskins was replaced when Robert De Niro became available and was paid $200,000 for his trouble. "Any other movies you don't want me to be in, just let me know!" he told the director.)
Set in Chicago during Prohibition, "The Untouchables" revolves around Eliot Ness (Costner), a rookie G-man who assembles a rough-and-ready team of unbribable agents to smash Capone's empire. Under the instruction of veteran Irish cop Jimmy Malone (Connery), Ness is forced to become as ruthless as his quarry, resulting in a series of thrilling action set-pieces and some brilliant banter courtesy of screenwriter David Mamet.
De Palma directs with effortless panache, most memorably in a pistol-packing homage to the Odessa Steps sequence from "Battleship Potemkin" on the staircase of Chicago's Grand Station. He also gets a career-best performance from Connery and a larger-than-life one from De Niro, in his element as the arrogant mobster.