The Untouchables

The governing voice in Brian De Palma’s 1987 film belongs to its screenwriter, David Mamet. Characters announce their rules aloud and strike bargains in the open, so the film advances through stated terms rather than interior life. The shootout that closes it was not the scene on the page. The planned version called for a nineteen thirties train that the budget could not build, so De Palma restaged it on location at Chicago Union Station to save money. The award record needs care. Sean Connery won Actor in a Supporting Role. Morricone’s score was only nominated, in Music (Original Score), losing to The Last Emperor; Art Direction and Costume Design were nominations too. Its clearest break with the record is Frank Nitti. The film has Ness throw him off a roof during Capone’s tax trial; the real Nitti shot himself in a North Riverside railway yard on 19 March 1943, more than a decade later. A good fit if you want the station stairs held in real time and then dropped into slow motion, and do not mind that the most famous part of the film advances nothing. Not for anyone who checks the record afterwards: the film moves both the date and the hand behind a real death.