It had to happen eventually - that day when I finally reached Peak Fantasy. I woke up yesterday morning in the stone-cold, solid knowledge that I physically couldn't face one more damned movie that transcended the bounds of reality - no more cartoons, no more whimsical family adventures, no more horror. I needed a break, and not just because all four potential candidates on the listings page were films I'd tackled already.
As is often the case, I brought in Mr. B to help me make my choice. After nearly thirteen years together, he's developed a handy ability to pick up on my tastes and moods at any given moment, so I sometimes use him as my personal weathervane when I have no idea what I fancy. A heist movie, he said, and I was pretty sure he was right, but unfortunately the heist movie I really wanted to see hadn't actually been made. Given that Hustle doesn't exist in feature-length form and probably never will, I suppose American Hustle would have been a decent choice, but that didn't occur to me at that precise moment. Instead, I realised I'd never seen Brian de Palma's The Untouchables, and that I actually rather fancied it. So, that was that, then.
You'll all know what it's about, no doubt: namely, Sean Connery and his excruciatingly bad Irish accent. Oh, there's a subplot in there about Eliot Ness trying to nail Al Capone in prohibition-era Chicago, but that's really just window dressing for Connery and the accent no matter what anybody says.
I won't beat about the bush; I enjoyed this one immensely. De Palma really knows how to compose a shot and isn't afraid to show it, from the top-down opening onto De Niro's Capone being attended to by a troupe of barbers. I knew then that I was going to be in for a good time, and I wasn't disappointed.
I should probably point out at this point that The Untouchables is, essentially, a live action cartoon, all visual flash and emotion by numbers. It ain't Chekhov, although notably, it was scripted by David Mamet. The dialogue is delightfully snappy, but the film saves its love for the concept of the gangster fantasy rather than for any of its characters, who exist to fill holes and keep the plot moving briskly along.
It's all backed up by a sparkling Ennio Morricone soundtrack which, interestingly, follows the characters' inner lives rather than the drift of the action, so that we see a pitched and bloody gun battle against the sort of sonic backdrop more normally associated with the arrival of the Starship Enterprise. The trick is a neat one, and really made me think about what was happening at any given moment.
If I had to pick any holes in this I guess I'd complain about the lack of even a single named female character; it can't have been terribly edifying for Patricia Clarkson to show up on the credits as Ness' Wife. My personal method of justifying this, though, is that The Untouchables is essentially a fairytale for boys of all ages - we never needed a name for Snow White's prince, after all.
Maybe I did land up watching another fantasy movie, after all. Maybe that's no bad thing.
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