Brian De Palma: The Untouchables

No one in The Untouchables, either cop or criminal, seems to have anything in the way of a moral code. Their lives are far more existential: the criminal steals because he is a thief, and the cop upholds the law because it is his job to do so. When a reporter asks Bureau of Prohibition agent Eliot Ness (Kevin Costner), dedicated defender of Prohibition, what he would do if the government repealed the 18th Amendment, he replies without hesitation" I think I'll have a drink." Until that day, however, "It is the law of the land."

As for everyone caught in-between, life under a system of legislated morality has seemingly divorced individuals from a sense of right and wrong. Ness' efforts to conduct raids on bootleggers fail because of corrupt cops tipping off Al Capone's men in order to get a few drops of the material they're helping to hide. The title refers to the team of uncorrupted policemen Ness and Irish beat cop Jim Malone (Sean Connery) recruit straight out of police academy to ensure their unblemished records, but it just as well describes Al Capone and his empire, which has such control over the desires of the common American that the boss can openly chat with reporters about bootlegging.

In comparison to the hedonism of Scarface, The Untouchables does not show anyone particularly enjoying the thrill of illegal consumption. Flapper-filled speakeasies seem to be in some other dimension entirely from the world Ness and co. traverse to take down Capone. Those smoky, alcohol-serving dens are in the underworld, but the point here is that the cops need not descend into it to find law-breakers; the most flagrantly criminal people live topsoil. Not only that, they leave in lavish mansions fit for holding the aristocracy at court for the winter.

In such matters, De Palma's attention to detail and suggestion has never been better: period costumes and set design are immaculate, and the director clearly shoots for an accurate representation of the social turmoil caused by Prohibition, not simply in the resulting crime spree but in a skewing of values that led to romanticizing that crime. For example, he immediately juxtaposes the scene of Capone chumming with sympathetic reporters as he assures them he just runs a business and does not use violence with the bombing of a bar that refused to sell Capone's wares, killing everyone inside (including a young girl).

However, De Palma's capacity to let wooden performances go uncorrected has rarely been so apparent. Divorced from his Brechtian satire, De Palma crafts a remarkably straightforward Hollywood picture with The Untouchables, but that only means that the actors have nowhere to hide when one examines their work. Costner, who would go on to convey something resembling human emotion as a crusader in JFK, here barely modulates his voice, speaking in a flat tone even when yelling. Connery, playing an Irish cop, appears to have decided the best approach to the accent would be to speak in his normal voice but occasionally make it a bit more nasal. Thankfully, he only tries to keep up this charade for about five minutes, at which point he simply speaks like Sean Connery, full stop. Only Robert De Niro, who plays Capone like a more unassailable and confident version of the fat Jake LaMotta in Raging Bull, puts any effort into this.

De Palma, too, uses little of the prowess so freely on display in his usual style. The film has its share of Steadicam and crane shots, including a first-person roam outside Jimmy's apartment that has all the trappings of the director's voyeuristic, playful élan. But so much of the movie feels stiff, too mannered, as if the starch in everyone's suits bled into them and into the film itself.

This is all the more perplexing given that it was written by David Mamet. Though certainly not as madcap as Oliver Stone, Mamet nevertheless works best as a vulgarian wordsmith with an ear for detail, and only a few isolated moments of wit ever surface. The rest of the time, we get treated to farcical sub-slapstick—"Where's your warrant?" "He's my warrant!" comes the response with a sucker punch that makes the criminal's eyes bug out cartoonishly—that clashes with the somber tone of the rest of the film.

In fairness, the shootouts are fun, even if the famous rip-off of Potemkin's Odessa steps sequence feels like just that, lacking the creativity De Palma usually puts into his quotations. The lead-up to the fight is masterful De Palman suspense, and the actual gunfight in slo-mo is also entertaining, but where Obsession, Dressed to Kill and Body Double warped, inverted and experimented with his love of Hitchcock (to say nothing of minor variations on influences sprinkled throughout his work), this just feels like plagiarism.

I honestly don't know what the point of this movie is. People call Carlito's Way an "apology" for Scarface, but I would point to The Untouchables as the likelier candidate for a direct response to that film. If Scarface dove headfirst into the underworld (and potentially cracked its skull on the bottom), The Untouchables never really ventures anywhere outside the respectable world, but the point De Palma was making carries no weight without seeing how the respectable members of above-ground society are precisely the ones to sink into dens each night to get plastered and dance. The open wealth Capone enjoys is the only hint at the transparent garishness of the wealthy during the Great Depression, a financial catastrophe caused in part both by massive income inequality and the effective second economy created by Prohibition that made men like Capone so wealthy that, when the law cracked down on bootlegging, it collapsed the legitimate economy in addition to the illegal one.

But this is all projection. The Untouchables lives up to its name in that even the director seems reluctant to grab a hold of these people and really throw them into the muck. It runs in the opposite direction of Scarface, presenting a sterile view of crimefighting not even fully alleviated by the presence of blood. De Palma and Mamet do suggest that the characters want to be in a more violent movie, however: when one of the team, Wallace, starts tracking the accounts of every business tied to Capone and suggests getting the mobster on tax evasion, Ness waves him off, unwilling to take down a murderer with a prosaic approach.

After under-performing or flopping with most of his '80s features, The Untouchables proved a much-needed hit for De Palma, though I can't help but lump it with the likes of Wise Guys instead of legitimately good mainstream fare like the director's next film. By the end of the film, Ness has eroded his law-abiding façade, killing an unarmed man and lying to a judge to ensure the outcome he wants in Capone's trial. Had the rest of the film put more effort and care into crafting a moral viewpoint, this downfall would only enhance the irony of Ness' final statement, the aforementioned quip about post-Prohibition what-ifs. As it is, these end-game occurrences are merely the first signs of life after two hours of watching De Palma fuss over everything but what's important. At least it secured him a few large budgets for his next couple of features. When not even an Ennio Morricone can liven your film, you've got problems.

Steven Spielberg: Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade

After the garish, overly frenetic and borderline offensive Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Spielberg tried to make amends by producing what was quite possibly his best film to that point, Empire of the Sun. When that also failed to light audiences on fire, Spielberg returned to his adventure franchise to win back the crowd. Given how simple Last Crusade turned out, it's amazing to think that initial ideas, even drafts of the film involved haunted mansions and Scottish ghosts. At last, Spielberg acquiesced to George Lucas' proposal, to have Indy search for the Holy Grail. Oh, and sprinkle in some Nazis while you're at it. There's a good lad.

Of the four Indiana Jones films, Last Crusade may the most inane but also the best embodiment of the escapism the series sought to repackage. Raiders is such a masterpiece that you spend as much time breaking down each immaculate shot as reveling in the overall effect, but Last Crusade is sloppy enough to make it more relatable even as it injects Spielberg's usual themes into a franchise that previously existed to honor the serials of Spielberg and Lucas' youth.

The opening segment, a flashback to Indiana's youth, finds him as a Boy Scout riding horses in Utah. He and a friend stumble upon grave robbers uncovering the Cross of Coronado, causing Indy to swoop in and grab the artifact to place in a museum. After a lengthy chase that involves, for whatever reason, a train carrying circus animals (and some piss-poor animatronics, truth be told), Indy makes his way home, only to be shushed by his father, who wants to hear nothing of his son's adventures. The sheriff comes by and reveals himself to be bought by the thieves, and the head robber, dressed as Indy later will, expresses his admiration for the kid and even gives the boy his fedora. We never see the father, but we get plenty of looks at this man dressed the way our hero will later pattern his iconic outfit. In an instant, Spielberg moves from the silliest moment in any of the Indiana Jones films thus far -- though I am invoking the "chilled monkey brains" exemption -- to something that recalls his more serious aims as a filmmaker, and the sudden move from wide, John Ford-esque vistas and moving shots to static, cramped, uncomfortable moments inside the Jones household communicates how much freer Indy feels when anywhere away from his father.

Back in the present, Indiana, long estranged from his dad, returns to university after finally reclaiming that artifact that got the giant stone ball rolling in Indy's life. As usual, he can barely get through a class before getting the itch to go back in the field, and the verdant, tranquil grounds of the college look odder and more out of place behind Jones than the matte paintings and composite backgrounds that frame Indy's typical actions. So, when an old colleague, Donovan (Julian Glover), stops by to assign Jones a new task, he jumps at the chance. Even better, it concerns the artifact his father devoted his entire life to: the Holy Grail.

A spiritual line runs through all of the Indiana Jones movies, Last Crusade is the first to take anything seriously. Raiders of the Lost Ark only got down to the nitty-gritty of Jewish theology when it directly concerned the ark; everything else focused on the traps of ancient civilizations. Temple of Doom made a fun house roller-coaster of Eastern spirituality, recreating the racist caricature of old serials without ever commenting on it. Yet Christian imagery dominates Last Crusade, from giant stained-glass windows containing clues to specific religious instructions for avoiding booby-traps. Even the father-son dynamic, a conflict between a seemingly all-knowing father and the son who devotes his life to pleasing him, has a Christian undertone.

That Spielberg should take a more serious tack is amusing when you consider that Last Crusade is, by a long shot, the most comedic and lightweight of the four Jones movies. Even the slapstick of Temple had a veneer of dark horror to it, but Last Crusade works best as a comedy on a grand scale, effectively returning to 1941 and finally figuring out how to balance pratfalls with Spielberg's epic canvas. This is only more true when we are finally confronted with Henry Jones, none other than Sean Connery. The mismatch between Ford and Connery, only 12 years older than the actor playing his son (and, more importantly, Scottish), is inherently comedic. But Connery himself appears to have signed on for a comedy, all goofy faces and dry one-liners. The hackneyed dialogue that makes the early parts of film stilted suddenly gives way to an unlikely double act that livens up the proceedings immensely.

Compare the gallows humor of the German being sliced by an airplane propeller in Raiders to the farce of Henry shooting down the plane he and Indy are flying by tearing up the tail. The catacomb crawling with rats just isn't as terrifying as a floor covered in serpents, and the creepy-crawlie sequence here comes with its own punchline when Indy and his latest lover, Dr. Elsa Schneider (Alison Doody), emerge in the middle of a Venetian café. Perhaps the funniest aspect of the film is how befuddled and clumsy Henry is; you begin to question why Indy feels the need to prove himself to this dolt, until the son makes his own slip-ups. When the two are first reunited, Henry beams that his son picked up his research and successfully hid the diary containing all his Grail research from Nazi capture, only to learn immediately that his son brought that diary all the way back to the lion's den. "I should have sent it to the Marx brothers!" Henry spits. Besides, the fact that they both slept with Elsa makes for a surprisingly complex take on Spielberg's usual father-son relationships. I mean, you don't see that in E.T.

The action sequences are not as impressive, nor as numerous, as I remember, as if Spielberg intended it to be a comedy all along. A chase involving a tank is more funny than suspenseful, and the final challenge tests Jones' intellect over his ability. And yet, the film never flags, kept alive by its silliness and genuinely engaging performances from both Ford and Connery, actors not normally known for comedic timing. The Scottish accent Ford puts on in a hilariously misguided attempt to dupe a castle servant slays me, and I love that he can beat up a blimp usher five inches shorter than him, steal his clothes and emerge with a perfectly fitted outfit. It's also nice to see Spielberg questioning just what happens to Indy's archaeology class in his absence, as students swarm his office when he returns begging for their long-overdue midterm grades. Even the young women who fawn over him would rather get their essays back than spend a lovely evening with the good doctor.

The climax is grandiose enough to appeal to everyone but takes the material serious enough to give the franchise an emotional stake for the first time. Wounding Henry gives Indy a concrete reason to go after the grail where previous films have relied solely on Indy wanting an artifact to have it -- Temple, with its subplot of enslaved children, was too murky to effectively create tension. Spielberg ingeniously shoots the immortal knight deep within the cave that holds the cup in ghostly white that clashes with the golden hues of the burning fires and light reflecting off the ostentatious adornments surrounding the true Cup of Christ as decoys, communicating the dark side of eternal life in an instant.

The most significant development in the film, however, is the introduction of a more positive side to Spielberg's usual theme of absent fathers. For the first time, the director opens the possibility to reconciliation. Roy Neary left his family behind to go to space. Elliott's dad remained removed. James finds his way back to his family, but he's too scarred by life in an internment camp to ever readjust. Here, Spielberg slowly comes around: maybe a distant father and a son can reconcile, but so far this can only happen far down the road, after a rotten childhood is set aside. It would be a few years yet before the director would let a child forgive his father.