The Untouchables

So Prohibition, huh? That must have sucked. People wanted to drink, but the government said it was illegal to do so. The government agencies and police forces were tasked with limiting the bootleggers, but that was easier said than done. The most famous? Eliot Ness, a Treasury agent who became famous for helping take down Chicago gangster Al Capone. His story was turned into a successful TV show in the late 1950s and early 1960s and maybe most famously in a feature film, 1987's The Untouchables.

It's 1930 and Prohibition has turned Chicago into a warring city of dead bodies and rival gangsters fighting for control. The most powerful though is Al Capone (Robert De Niro), ruling the city and the influx of alcohol with an iron fist. Where there's demand, he's got the supply. A U.S. Treasury agent, Eliot Ness (Kevin Costner), has been called in to bring Capone to justice, hopefully bringing his crime empire down with him. Ness, idealistic and a little naive, struggles with where to start, meeting dead end after dead end as he discovers how deep Capone's empire goes. Obsessed with doing his job and doing it well, Ness keeps on, recruiting a small group of agents and police officers, including a tough Chicago beat cop, James Malone (Sean Connery), who knows the streets better than anyone. As he quickly finds out, Ness doesn't know how deep he'll have to go to accomplish his mission, especially when the bodies start to pile up.

From director Brian De Palma, this is one of those perfect guy's guy movies. It is based on Ness' real-life exploits as his crew of Untouchables took the battle to Capone in Chicago between 1929 and 1931. Yes, time is compressed, some names are changed here and there, but the point is the same. It has just about everything going for it. 'Untouchables' was filmed on location in Chicago (looks gorgeous), and it feels like Depression Era Chicago, picking up two Oscar nominations for Costume Design and Art Direction/Set Decoration. Everything from the background on the streets to the cars to the time-appropriate costumes (Armani suits never looked so good), it all adds layer after layer to the film. Also picking up an Oscar nomination is the score from composer Ennio Morricone.Listen to his full soundtrack HERE. I love the sweep of it, quiet, moving Morricone balanced with bigger, epic Morricone.

At the forefront of 'Untcouhables' is a great pairing of stars. Costner is one of the biggest stars of the 1980s with everything from Bull Durham to Field of Dreams, Silverado to No Way Out. Connery was a Hollywood legend, the firmly established star. Their on-screen dynamic is an underrated part of the success here that can get lost in the shuffle. Costner's Eliot is a hard-driving, hard-working idealist. He wants to accomplish his mission, but do it the right way, not knowing how filthy the world is he finds himself in. Connery's Malone is the flat-footed beat cop with a long career behind him. He knows everyone, knows all the secrets and inner-workings. Eliot Ness is looking for help while Malone is looking for a reason to become re-energized again after years of watching greed and corruption poison Chicago. Their scenes together crackle, dialogue just brimming with energy and plenty of great one-liners.

Joining Costner and Connery as the Untouchables are a very young Andy Garcia and a scene-stealing Charles Martin Smith. Garcia plays George Stone, a cop fresh out of the Police Academy and a dead-shot with a pistol, his Italian background hinted at but never fully explained. Garcia's Stone is inherently cool, a man of few words who lets his smirk and his pistol do his talking. Martin Smith plays Oscar Wallace, a Treasury accountant/bookkeeper who jumps at the chance to do some actual field work with the Untouchables. It's four cool characters, a great dynamic among the quartet, an odd couple men on a mission grouping that works perfectly.

Committing to gaining weight to really look the part, De Niro is a fine choice to play infamous Chicago gangster Al Capone. It is a part that would have been easy to be exaggerated, but De Niro knows how far to push it. Capone is hot-tempered, fiery and barely keeps his emotions in check. The part is mostly long scenes, monologues really, where De Niro gets to flex a bit. Richard Bradford plays the police commissioner caught in the middle of it all and maybe playing all sides, Patricia Clarkson plays Ness' pregnant wife, an uncredited Clifton James as the prosecuting district attorney, and Billy Drago as Frank Nitti, Capone's chief enforcer and accomplished killer.

With the actual history here condensed from a few years to seemingly a few months, we get an episodic story that covers a ton of ground in the 119-minute movie. More than the performances, the music, the period appropriate....well, everything, 'Untouchables' always stands out for me because of the well-staged set pieces. An ambush near the Canadian border is a gem, the machine guns rattling like crazy to Morricone's swooping score. The highlight though has Ness and Co. looking for Capone's bookkeeper, desperately trying to get out of town, at Union Station. The action, the drama, the nods to classic films (Battleship Potempkin), and the slow motion all build to this almost unbearable tension. Maybe it isn't the most unified script/story, but the set pieces help keep things together beginning to end. A gem, a must-see for fans of Costner, Connery, gangster movie fans and any Chicagoans.

The Untouchables (1987): ****/****

Ocean's Eleven (2001)

My usual stance on remakes is pretty simple; if the original is good, why bother? If the original is awful with some sort of potential, okay, go ahead with it. Of course, there's exceptions to every rule. A minor classic in its own right based solely on entertainment value, 1960's Ocean's Eleven didn't need to be remade. If you're going to remake a quality movie, you better improve on it, and 2001's Ocean's Eleven is the rare remake that's better than the original.

After being released from prison following a four-year sentence, Danny Ocean (George Clooney) has plans...huge plans. A thief and con man, Danny heads to Los Angeles where he signs on friend and fellow thief, Rusty (Brad Pitt), to join him. What's Danny's plan? He's going to do what no one has ever done; rob not one, not two, but three Las Vegas casinos and their impregnable vault on a fight night when over $160 million will be waiting if the job can be pulled off. The owner of the casinos? Terry Benedict (Andy Garcia), the cutthroat businessman now going out with Danny's ex-wife, Tess (Julia Roberts). To pull the job though, Danny's going to need help so he starts assembling a team of con men, thieves and specialists. Impossible for this group? Nah.

This is a fun movie. There, that's all I really need to say. Everything else is just fluff. This 2001 remake is the definition of what a fun, entertaining, popcorn movie should aspire to. It's smart but not condescendingly smart. It's funny but it doesn't try too hard. It's ridiculously unrealistic, but who cares?!? Look at that cast! Director Steven Soderbergh made one of the most polished, stylish caper movies ever, improving on the groundwork set up by the 1960s Sinatra version. Las Vegas is a crazy, over the top place and that translates well to the movies. A score/soundtrack from David Holmes is a funky, cool retro mix of music, as fun and energetic as the story itself. HERE is the main theme. I defy you to not bob your head, tap your foot as you hear it.

The script is great here, the thing that keeps it all moving. It sounds so simple, a well-written script in a dramatic but not heavy drama film. It is a smart script without being in your face smart. Putting the team together, Danny asks Rusty "You think we need one more?" Rusty's face is buried in his arms, and he says nothing. Danny answers "You think we need one more," a statement now. He finishes "We'll get one more." The script gives a very talented cast a chance to shine and interact, especially Clooney and Pitt, but there's not a single character who isn't given a chance to shine. What came first in a chicken or the egg scenario? Does a good script boost a cast, or does a great cast make a script better? Short answer....who cares? The movie's great either way.

An ensemble-cast worthy of a 1960s epic, I still wonder how a cast this big was assembled. Clooney, Pitt, Roberts and Garcia would be enough for most movies but not here. Danny's crew includes Frank (Bernie Mac), the inside man working in the casino, Reuben (Elliott Gould), the former Vegas casino owner and bankroll, Virgil (Casey Affleck) and Turk (Scott Caan) Malloy, two brothers providing transport, Livingston (Eddie Jemison), the tech specialist, Basher (an uncredited Don Cheadle), the explosives expert, Saul (Carl Reiner), the aging con man, Yen (Shaobo Qin), the acrobat, and Linus (Matt Damon), a young pickpocket and thief on the rise. You couldn't ask for a better cast. The scene post-heist is a gem too, the team standing in front of the Bellagio fountains to Claude Debussy's Clair de Lune. Watch there <---- and listen HERE.

Fun and entertainment value aside, this is a heist film, and the casino vault heist doesn't disappoint. Now anyone who's been to a casino knows how ridiculous security is, but that's the fun of it. Could a job like this ever really work? No, but I'm sure Clooney, Pitt and Co. could pull it off nonetheless. A full 45-minutes, the heist goes down on a fight night, the 11 pulling a long list of cons and tricks to take down the vault. Things have been hinted at but nothing specific so seeing the twists and turns provide a great ride. Even on repeated viewings, the twists still work. How often can you say that? It's a great movie, one you can watch over and over again.

Ocean's Eleven <---trailer (2001): ****/****   

Confidence

For every actor/actress you swear you see in every other movie ever released, there are those who are a little bit more picky with the roles they take.  For today, that's Edward Burns, star of a major movie like Saving Private Ryan but typically in smaller, independent movies that barely make a dent in theaters. Limiting his roles on-screen in front of the camera, Burns also writes, produces and directs behind the camera.  So with the few movies he has done, you've got to take advantage when the opportunity presents itself, like 2003's Confidence.

The timing of watching movies just seems too spooky sometimes.  Two days ago I reviewed 1973's Charley Varrick, a story about a small-time crook who knocks off a bank holding mob money. What's Confidence about? A team of con men who pull a successful con only to find out their mark is giving them mob money. Still, that's the only huge similarity in this overlooked, very stylish, sometimes needlessly confusing con job flick.  It bombed in theaters upon its release in 2003 and has receded into that sea of box office bombs.  It isn't anything different from so many other similar movies, but with an impressive cast from top to bottom it's hard to let this one slip by.

New in Los Angeles, Jake Vig (Burns) and his team of con men, Gordo (Paul Giamatti) and Miles (Brian Van Holt), run a successful con on a mid-level businessman that nets them $150,000. Bad news though, the money is linked to a crime boss known as the King (Dustin Hoffman), and the man wants his money back.  Instead of leaving town and going on the run, Jake and his crew decide to go to work for King, pulling another con job on a target of his choosing. Their target is a crooked banker with money laundering ties who has a past with King, but now Jake must figure some way to get to the impossible target. With a beautiful pickpocket, Lily (Rachel Weisz), joining his crew, he goes to work.  But when things start to come together, Jake finds out that an old nemesis of his, government agent Gunther Butan (Andy Garcia), is closing in on the team.

Directed by James Foley, Confidence is nothing new when it comes to the last con, the last heist, the specialists working together genre. It's well-made, polished, and stylish to a point.  The problem is that it's very aware that it's polished and stylish in its execution.  It tries too hard to be a cool movie at times. The script is well-written -- even if there are some unexplained plot elements -- but relies heavily on the use of the word 'fuck' just for the sake of saying it.  None of this is to say I disliked the movie, but instead it's just something I noticed.  The best examples of successful movies like this just are cool. They don't need to try, and at times this is that movie that so desperately wants you to like it that it gets caught up in itself instead of just being a good movie.

As is so often the case with movies with some major flaws, a solid cast can be a saving grace even if the materiel isn't up to par. Burns is a surprisingly good choice to play Jake Vig, this very smooth, quick on his feet con man who can pull a job off because he's 20 steps ahead of you. He can lie, manipulate and steal like nobody's business, and you won't even know you've been had when he's done. Weisz is one of the best actresses around in Hollywood today so it's fun to see her do more of a commercial, mainstream role. Her looks never hurt either as she pulls off a great femme fatale part that film noirs would have been jealous of. Garcia is criminally underused but does his best with an underwritten part while Giamatti and Van Holt look to be having a lot of fun in parts that don't require them to do much. Also worth mentioning are Donal Logue and Luis Guzman as two LAPD cops on Jake's payroll, John Carroll Lynch as the new con's mark/target, Franky G as Lupus, King's henchman, and Morris Chestnut as a gunman looking for answers.

From the time he burst into movies in the late 1960s, Dustin Hoffman was a star. Now in 2011 or here in 2003, he's an icon, one of the great actors in the history of Hollywood.  Here as the King, he's playing a role that is mostly a glorified cameo that requires him to show up for three or four scenes all told.  He gets to ham it up playing this crime boss who we're not quite sure what he's involved in.  Hoffman plays so perfectly off of co-stars like Burns and Weisz that he raises their scenes up a level on his own.  His King is a frantic, hyper and ADHD, and a lot of fun to watch.

It is a movie about a con so you know a twist is coming in the finale. This is where the movie tries too hard attempting to pull the wool over the audience's eyes.  It's revealed so quickly all the twists and turns are wasted. The best reveals are the ones that lay out every little thing so we know what happened too.  Confidence gets so wrapped up in trying to trick us too that even after going back and watching the ending again, I'm still not sure exactly what was going on. The movie itself is entertaining and never boring.  But at just 97 minutes, there is way too much going on. Nothing is allowed to breathe and develop, meaning actors like Garcia and Giamatti are wasted in parts where they'd usually shine.  It is still a solid movie that's worth a watch, but don't expect a classic.

Confidence <---trailer (2003): ***/****