It’s Chicago in the 1930s. The city is ruled by Al Capone (Robert De Niro)- a dreaded mafia don, who has built an empire of vices and who practically owns the entire legal system. Federal Authorities send Eliot Ness- a special treasury agent with the specific task of bringing Capone to book.  But Ness soon finds himself surrounded by Capone’s covert cronies and corrupt cops. Undaunted and driven by a zealous desire to nab the don, Ness finds an unlikely mentor in an aging but honest policeman Jim Malone (Sean Connery). With two more handpicked team-members- one a bespectacled accountant Oscar Wallace (Charles Smith) who hasn’t touched a gun in his life and another-an Italian sharpshooter rookie cop Giuseppe Petri (Andy Garcia), Ness and Malone now start raiding and destroying Capone’s joints one by one. Thanks to their honest upright stand, this crack team now earns a media sobriquet- ‘The Untouchables’. Capone’s men retaliate and soon it becomes a bloody no-holds-barred battle. Will Ness finally succeed? Or will Capone find a legal loophole to escape the net?

 

The Untouchables is a typical Good V/s Evil, law V/s gangster tale but what makes it special is its classy presentation as a period drama. Visually it’s a rich film portraying the US prohibition era of the 1930s through authentic sets and costumes. It also boasts of an impressive Oscar-winning background score. Nobel laureate writer David Mamit’s screenplay and Brian De Palma’s direction, both got considerable flak for being too obvious in demarcating the good and bad characters in plain black and white shades, instead of bringing forth their grey human sides. So if Kevin Kostner’s Agent Ness is tough, correct and totally wrapped up in his mission, then Robert De Niro’s Al Capone is a flamboyant, unscrupulous megalomaniac. It’s Sean Connery’s cynical know-it-all cop-turned-special agent Malone who really steals the film with a superb Oscar-winning performance.

 

Many of its scenes like Malone shooting an already dead gangster’s brain off to scare his accomplice, a brilliantly action-packed railway-station arrest sequence and a clever courtroom climax have become cinematic milestones. ‘Style over content’ is the only flaw which keeps this film from being ranked along side Godfather- the ultimate litmus test for gauging greatness of a gangster-movie and yet, it is this very stylistic production, which makes it eminently watchable.