 |
| DIRECTED BY |
| Brian De Palma
|
| STARRING |
| Kevin Costner |
| Sean Connery |
| Charles Martin Smith |
| Andy Garcia |
 |
Warning: Spoilers Throughout
It�s not usually a good thing when your protagonist seems to remain in the same general emotional state throughout your whole film. I have no problem with fictionalizations here � after all, this isn�t a documentary, but couldn�t at least some of Eliot Ness�s interesting character quirks made it into the film? Why couldn�t we have seen him go through the serious emotional and mental trauma that he must have gone through while dealing with the adversity of these criminals as his best friends die all around him? He had to become disillusioned at some point. He had to have his own private doubts. The problem isn�t so much with Costner�s performance as it is with the screenwriter�s characterizations (Pulitzer winner David Mamet no less.) Instead Ness is displayed as nothing more than an emotionally infallible, stolid, pristine, and levelheaded action hero at all times, save a few transient moments of surprise over the death of a few of his friends. This makes the film a lot less interesting than it could�ve been.
The same could be applied De Niro�s Al Capone � I�m not even asking for us to be given any insight into how Capone attained his highfalutin level in the first place; we�re not given any history, and that�s fine. But how about giving us a little more insight into this character than a few random scenes showing him clobbering his henchman with a baseball bat for no apparent reason, his sardonic comments to reporters, and his disgust over Ness�s progressions? I kept waiting to see something in Capone other than his unwaveringly ignorant anger. Even the assembly of the vigilante group is a lot less interestingly done than it could�ve been � Ness and crew must�ve been complete idiots to simply toss a gun to the accountant (Smith) and let him come along for a supposedly-serious ambush. A predictable joke is then made out of Smith�s character, depicting his magically surprising evolution into a major commando.
The elaborate production/landscape design alone looks like it must�ve taken up more than half of the budget, but it�s money well spent. Ennio Morricone�s excellent score really gets the audience psyched up for the film and De Palma doesn�t disappoint them in terms of gun-totting, action-packed fare. This is a very cleanly constructed film and it certainly looks great. The baby carriage sequence on the stairwell is perhaps the best remembered sequence of the film, and for good reason � De Palma�s decision to shoot it in slow motion seems appropriate enough, even if the whole scenario seems a little too convenient. We get many of De Palma�s cinematic signatures here, particularly the POV sequence of the gangster entering Malone�s house, although he wisely strays away from his split-screen fanciness here.
The truly underrated aspect of this film is Billy Drago�s creepy-yet-charismatic performance as Capone�s efficient, white-clothed hitman Frank Nitti � his showdown with Ness is also (for my money) the film�s best sequence, particularly the painful-to-watch �rope� scene. It�s a shame that Drago then faded into straight-to-video and made-for-TV obscurity afterwards. It�s also a shame that this film never really managed to elevate its main characters into being more than just a simplified good guy and a simplified bad guy.
