Treasury agent Eliot Ness (Costner) enlists Irish beat cop Jimmy Malone (Sean Connery) to school him in “the Chicago Way” so he can catch Capone, and enlists the help of two more “untouchables” (incorruptibles): George Stone (Andy Garcia), a hotheaded police cadet hoping to give Italian Americans a good name, and Oscar Wallace (Charles Martin Smith), the geeky-chic accountant who cracks the case, by nailing Capone for income tax evasion.
With a screenplay by David Mamet and a magnificent cast De Palma enjoyed one of his biggest hits with this oppulent, larger than life rendering of the Capone story. Ennio Morricone’s score certainly doesn’t hurt either (track titles include “Machine Gun Lullaby” and “The Strength of the Righteous”. De Palma brought inflections from Westerns to the film’s white hat/black hat morality, and borrowed from Eisenstein’s Odessa Steps sequence to beef up a shoot out set piece.
It goes to that place that all films aspiring to greatness must attain: the country of myth, where all the figures must be larger and more vivid than life.
Richard Schickel, Time
Community Partner
Brian de Palma
Kevin Costner, Sean Connery, Robert De Niro, Bob Hoskins
USA
1987
English
Indigenous & Community Access
Credits
Screenwriter
David Mamet
Cinematography
Stephen H. Burum
Editor
Jerry Greenberg
Original Music
Ennio Morricone
Art Director
William A. Elliott
Also in This Series
Ennio
Cinema Paradiso director Giuseppe Tornatore proves the perfect filmmaker to craft this loving tribute to one of the all-time greats: composer Ennio Morricone (1928-2020).
Image: Courtesy of Music Box Films
A Fistful of Dollars
Morricone's clamorous score -- with its chanting, flamenco guitar, bells and whistling -- encapsulated everything that was exciting and new about Sergio Leone's revolutionary spaghetti western, its brazen cheek and style.
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
The third and the best of the so-called 'Dollars' trilogy amplifies Leone's baroque style: crane shots, shock cuts and Morricone music all vying for attention as three rogues hunt buried gold in a series of triangular variations.
The Mission
Written by Robert Bolt (Lawrence of Arabia; A Man for All Seasons), The Mission is the story of an C18th Catholic outpost on the lands of the Guarani people, near the Iguazi Falls. Music is a transcendent force here, and Morricone's score is inspired.
