The Semiquincentennial Movie Project is an ongoing celebration of the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States. During the course of this project your humble blogger is choosing a movie a week to represent each of the 50 states in the Union, as well as a movie scheduled for 4th of July weekend that will represent the nation's capitol, Washington D.C. The order of the weekly entries will coincide with the order of each state's entry into the fold (although, not necessarily coinciding with the date of their entry into said fold).
Week #21: Illinois-
Details about Illinois:
State bird: cardinal
State flower: violet
State tree: wild oak
Additional historical trivia:
You might THINK it was in New York, but officially the first building that could be classified as a "skyscraper" was built in Chicago.
Twinkies were invented in Schiller Park.
The first Dairy Queen opened for business in Illinois.
Ray Kroc opened the first McDonald's outside of California in Des Plaines. Kroc was from Illinois. (Now, I'm hungry...)
The famous Route 66 has it's starting point in Chicago. Or ending point if you are starting in California...
Illinois was the first state to ratify the 13th Amendment which outlawed slavery.
The world's largest public library is in Chicago.
Famous people born in Illinois" U.S. President Ronald Reagan, Ray Kroc, Harrison Ford, Hugh Hefner, Walt Disney, Pope Leo XIV, Jimmy Connors and John Belushi.
The Untouchables (1987):
The most famous gangster in the history of the United States would almost surely be Al Capone. While the history behind the efforts of the Federal government to put an end to Al Capone's reign as the crime boss of Chicago may be known to most people, it is a sure bet that only the most knowledgeable students have more than a passing acquaintance with the details. Most people probably only know the story from either the TV series with Robert Stack, or from this film.
The fact is that both are entirely reliant on dramatic license to tell a story and are filled with stuff that was rearranged or even invented out of whole cloth. One thing in particular that stands out in the film is that Eliot Ness and Al Capone had virtually no face to face interaction during the era. One site I read claims that Ness was only interacting with Capone when he served as one of the escorts that took Capone to prison after his trial.
That does not mean that Brian De Palma's film should be avoided completely, however, unless you are one of those people who demand strict historical accuracy in your films that deal with history. Instead, you could just look on this film as a well crafted fictional story and come away from it with a feeling of satisfaction.
As I have noted elsewhere, I am not a big fan of Kevin Costner. In fact, if it wasn't for the presence of Robert De Niro and Sean Connery in this film, I doubt if I would have as much appreciation for it, at least from an acting viewpoint.
There is not much of Costner's portrayal that really connects with me. Roger Ebert in his review sums it up for me that he doesn't provide "any of the little twists and turns of character that might have made Ness into an individual", although he puts the blame more on David Mamet's script rather than on the actor himself.
Connery won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for his work, but De Niro was virtually ignored. I thought that De Niro was equally worthy of at least a nomination, even though some reviews claimed he was basically just going through the motions.
The film opens with a scene that somehow just doesn't ring true, at least for me. Capone (Robert DeNiro) is getting a shave while interviewers are asking him questions about his status as a figure in town of note. Somehow I just can't see Capone openly admitting to being involved in bootlegging to the press. Maybe the real Al Capone actually was forthright in his activities in real life: it's not as if no one even knew he existed at that point in time. But it just feels odd.
Eliot Ness (Kevin Costner) makes his appearance at the police headquarters and establishes his "goody two-shoes" persona when he makes it known that he is there to enforce Prohibition and take down those who would flaunt the law, including establishing that from that point forward, if the officers in his force had previously ignored the law before, there were expected to be paragons of virtue henceforth. Historically speaking, however, it was NOT against the law to drink during Prohibition, it was only against the law to make, transport or sell the stuff. Many people hoarded previously legal stashes that they got before Prohibition went into effect.
Ness first finds out what he is up against when he makes a raid on a place that supposedly has a shipment of the illegal contraband, but instead of finding liquor he finds... umbrellas. It becomes apparent that there was a betrayal of his raid plans from within the force. As Malone (Sean Connery) tells Ness later in the movie, the town of Chicago "stinks like a whorehouse at low tide."
Which is why, after convincing Malone to join his team, Malone says that they need to pull in some help from the newbies to the force. "If you're afraid of getting a bad apple, don't go to the barrel. Get it off the tree." So Malone and Ness go to the training section of the academy, looking for a man who is a good shot and honest (as in not corrupted by the graft that is rampant on the force).
The scene where they recruit George Stone (Andy Garcia) is one of my favorite scenes as far as dialogue. Malone and Stone have a tête-à-tête in which Malone queries Stone about his heritage:
Also to come on board is a rather milquetoast addition, Oscar Wallace (Charles Martin Smith) who is an accountant in his real life. He is not initially what you would expect for a gun-toting gung ho federal agent, although he does develop over the course of his activities. Wallace thinks the best way, however, to take down Capone is to find information that would help to prosecute Capone for tax evasion.
There are some great scenes in the second half of the film. Ness and his cohorts look to try to stop a shipment of contraband coming across the border from Canada. At one point one of the bootleggers is killed while trying to shoot it out with Ness. A short time later, while Malone is struggling to get another captive to open up about his connections he uses the corpse as an unorthodox incentive to get the prisoner to confess. I won't go into detail here, but it really is one of the scenes that probably swayed the Oscar voting to give Connery the statuette,
One of the other scenes that really stands out is a shootout at the train station. In an homage to a scene from Sergei Eisenstein's classic silent era film Battleship Potemkin, the scene is staged on a series of steps in the train station. It is ten minutes of very intense action, and plays out with several parallels to the Russian classic.
There is one scene that happens late in the movie that is entirely fictional, and one of the few scenes that irks me due to it's unbelievable situation. Ness has an encounter with Frank Nitti (Billy Drago) on top of the courthouse. The ending, although it somehow fits in the context of the way that the story has been played out in this fictional account, does not seem to ring true with the character of Ness as he has been played out up to this point. Once again, I am going to leave it to the audience to watch the film and judge for themselves.
Ultimately, of course, and it's not a spoiler since this part is historical, Capone ends up being convicted of tax evasion. Historically speaking, that may have been the only way it was going to play out, since the Capone organization was powerful enough to keep the crime boss out of jail for his more overt illegal activities.
While The Untouchables has it's issues with it's historical accuracy, the film is a stand out for the efforts that the director and the majority of the actors bring to the screen. Even some of the minor characters are memorable. I particularly liked Police Chief Mike Dorsett's (Richard Bradford) brief scenes when he interacted with Connery in the back alley fight. Dorsett is not as bad as it would all seem. I think he genuinely cares about Malone, even if Malone is opposed to the status quo (i.e. the bribery and corruption) in which Dorsett is involved.
This film ranks fairly high in lists of great gangster movies. One book I have in my collection, The Ultimate Book of Great Gangster Movies by George Anastasia and Glen Macnow puts it at #28, while the Ranker website puts it in at # 11. (It should come as no surprise that both of those put the first two The Godfather films as #1 and #2). My personal list would probably have it at #5, behind those first two The Godfather films, followed closely by Goodfellas and Little Caesar. (Sorry Pulp Fiction fans...)
Well, that wraps up this week's entry. Drive safely, folks.
Quiggy
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