Film

The Untouchables

Name: The Untouchables
Genre: Crime, History, Thriller
Released: 1987
Cast: Kevin Costner, Sean Connery, Robert De Niro, Charles Martin Smith, Andy Garcia

Brian De Palma's operatic take on Eliot Ness versus Al Capone, all marble stairwells, gunfire in slow motion, and Ennio Morricone's score swelling like a fever. Kevin Costner plays the boy scout, Sean Connery the world-weary cop who teaches him to fight dirty, De Niro chews the scenery as Capone. Big, stylish, unapologetically mythic crime cinema.

TMDb rating

7.8

If you liked this

GoodFellas1990

Scorsese's kinetic, funny, terrifying view from inside the mob rather than outside it. De Niro again, but this time as the guy Ness would be chasing, in a film that never lets you feel safe.

But Its restless energy and moral queasiness are the opposite of The Untouchables' clean heroics — this one won't let you root simply.

Heat1995

Michael Mann's cop-and-criminal chess match gives you the same obsessive-lawman-versus-professional-crook engine, stretched to three hours and cooled to a low, precise hum. De Niro again, on the other side of the badge now.

But It's long, deliberate, and more interested in procedure and loneliness than in the swagger and spectacle you just watched.

Miller's Crossing1990

The Coen brothers' Prohibition-era gangster picture, all shadowy alliances and beautiful dialogue, with a fedora-and-tommy-gun aesthetic that clearly grew from the same soil as De Palma's film.

But It's colder and more labyrinthine, with a plot that rewards close attention rather than the big emotional beats you just got.

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Scarface1932

This is the actual Capone-era gangster film the myth grew out of — same historical moment, none of the operatic gloss, all of the menace that De Palma later dressed up.

Howard Hawks' original, made while Capone was still alive and the censors were still panicking, is the blueprint this whole legend was built from — clipped, brutal, and startlingly modern under the static camera.

But Early-30s pacing and acting can feel stiff and stagey next to De Palma's fluid camerawork.

Road to Perdition2002

A Prohibition hitman and his son on the run, shot with the same painterly, almost religious seriousness — a gangster story that plays like a fable about fathers and violence.

But It's slower and sadder, more interested in grief than in the crackle of a good shootout.

L.A. Confidential1997

A different city, a different decade, but the same rot-under-the-surface energy: cops who have to get dirty to get justice, told with real wit and a killer ensemble.

But The plotting is dense and twisty — this rewards a second watch more than a relaxed one.

Boardwalk Empire2010

If you wanted more of this exact world — bootleggers, corrupt cops, real historical gangsters — here it is stretched over five seasons with room to breathe and go dark.

But It's a serious time commitment, and slower-burning than the two-hour hit you just had.

Public Enemies2009

Michael Mann's take on John Dillinger, all digital grit and doomed romanticism, makes a nice companion piece for its very different texture on similar Depression-era outlaw myth-making.

But Its flat, unglamorous digital look is a deliberate rebuke to exactly the kind of stylised glamour The Untouchables trades in.

Casino1995

Scorsese and De Niro again, but bigger, glitzier, and angrier — a mob epic about money and excess that shows you what happens after the Capones of the world go legit.

But It's punishing in length and cruelty; there's little of the clean-cut heroism you just enjoyed.

The Sting1973

A lighter chaser: Newman and Redford running a con on a Prohibition-era crime boss, all ragtime and sleight of hand, if you fancy the same world played for delight instead of dread.

But It's a caper, not a crime drama — don't expect the moral weight or the violence.

Prohibition2011

Same period, same real people, but the plain historical record behind the myth — worth seeing how much De Palma invented and how much he simply amplified.

Ken Burns' three-part documentary on the era that made Capone and Ness famous, full of archival photographs and voices that remind you this cartoonish showdown was built on real bootlegging, real deaths, real failed law.

But It's a documentary — talking heads and old photographs, no shootouts, no score swelling under a staircase.

High Noon1952

The Untouchables is a western in a fedora — a lone incorruptible man against institutional cowardice and corruption. High Noon told that story first, quieter and starker, with a clock instead of a train station.

A lawman abandoned by a town too cowardly to help him, counting down the minutes until a killer arrives — the exact moral skeleton of Ness's story, stripped of spectacle down to pure, ticking dread.

But It's a western, black-and-white, unhurried, with none of the stylised violence or big-name firepower you came for.