so COMPLETELY strange and frustrating -

I need to try and out into words what bothers me about this film....I just finished watching it again and really just can't seem to get to the bottom of this one....I've read many of the criticisms and defenses on this board and figured I'd throw my two cents in.

There are two levels for criticism here - 1) the logical inconsistencies. 2) tone. I'm going to leave #1 largely alone. We have a number of things that don't make a whole lot of sense in the film but overall those things didn't bother me. I'm not interested. "The Untouchables" has a far greater "problem", if indeed it is a problem -

I guess I'll start by pointing out when I first start noticing this.....thing...manifesting within the film: the bomb with the little girl (of course, the old guy is named "Pops"!). The whole entire scene is flat, utterly, absolutely uninvolving, predictable simply beyond BELIEF, and curiously "staged", as if DePalma WANTS to be that annoying friend who constantly spoils the film for you while you're watching it.

Then we have Catherine Ness's first appearance in the film. She tears off the calendar date and gives this almost wax-museum grin profile view towards the direction of Eliot. This is when the film starts its slide into the *almost*-surreal. I felt like I was watching a film directed by DePalma with David Lynch whispering advice in his ear. In every single scene involving Catherine there is this utterly frozen feeling, her smile a little too wide and made up....

This strange slide is accompanied by an absolutely perplexing David Mamet screenplay. Mamet has always been one of my favorites because he never settles for the simple route - you're going to get way more goodies thrown into the pot than you bargained for....in this case, however, it's like, Christ, I don't know - the dialogue is SO basic, SO beyond even the cliche' of the gangster genre, SO rather *deliberately* stripped down to its rawest element that it just lands like dead weight. The first time I saw the film I didn't notice too much. However, multiple viewings not only reveal the cracks, it shows that this dialogue was designed around a kind of mis-en-scene where the weight of the actors' presences were meant to contain a truly banal way of speaking:

Malone: Ness......Ness! I am just a poor [pause] beat cop! Now...how can I....help...you?

This is exactly how everyone talks in the film - as if John Wayne was the dialogue coach or something. The pauses aren't even necessary with this kind of writing - listen to every line one by one - it's shockingly simplistic. The actors may have been in collusion with DePalma and Mamet and gleefully played with ways to say this stuff to make it into the working definition of pretentiousness - something actively pretentious, rolling around in its own juvenile-sounding 8th-grade 'fighting stance' tone.

It's so frustrating to pinpoint exactly what's going on here, but a post I was just reading made a big deal about things feeling "overcooked" and that's it to a large degree, I think. It's as if DePalma, Mamet, and his cast got together and said, "We're going to make a send-up of gangster films and play it absolutely straight, as if it WERE a real gangster movie! And we'll make it so bloody people will have to believe it!" That's precisely the tone that this one rides. It's like watching a PG-rated kid's movie with these unbelievably visceral violent sequences that sort of "puncture" that bubble of artificiality - when the film goes all out into its most violent limb it's breathtaking - the train shootout, Wallace's killing in the elevator - it all just takes on this larger-than-life stylism that has you totally unable to look away.

When a scene of violence is over and everything 'settles', the banal dialogue resumes without us even being halfway aware. DePalma plays his 'talking' scenes like a sleight-of-hand magician, distracting us with those ceiling-shot camera angles, body language, and general background - even the actors themselves (particularly Connery and DeNiro) are allowed to not only tread water, but draw ATTENTION to their treading - not on the words coming out of their mouth but how they're delivered. Listen to Capone's "enthusiasms" line. It goes "Enthusiasms.....enthusiasms.......enthusiasms....." It's quite an odd way to direct and write - perhaps an unnecessary one - if "The Untouchables" played itself without the weirdness it may have been more effective. DePalma wants to push this one into some kind of comic-book universe. And how about those post-production loops? Almost every other scene has great swaths of dialogue dubbed in - I just can't believe on this budget and with this talent we had to resort to (quite obvious) looping of the dialogue...there has to be something more to it - maybe the looping gives that dialogue even *more* of that odd, stilted quality that feels like we're watching this thing drunk. They just can't possibly take all of this seriously - could they?!?!

Some more scenes to consider:
- Stone's one-two-three-four-five-six-OK let's meet him entrance.
- Ness's daughter's prayer with Catherine - Morricone's score flying high into the pink-princess-tinkerbell-stratosphere.
- The first raid with Malone. Listen to that guy (BADLY looped dialogue here) - "Hey! Hey! What is thiiiis? Thisssss isn't riiiight. You got a warrant?" Malone: "Yeah, sure, here's my warrant! (boff, boom, bing) How do you think he feels now? Better? Or worse? [WTF????]
- The matchbook. The scene with Nitti needing to remind himself where Malone is may be more towards the logical inconsistencies, but I'll go for it here - it's set up so obviously, like we're watching a silent film. When Ness discovers the same matchbook, watch the camera slowly zoom in - the entire thing is just so ridiculous! There is ZERO suspense here, just a kind of stylistic gleaning. DePalma is milking the scene for the style in *watching* the matchbook illuminate, NOT for any kind of traditional "aha!" suspense.
- Capone at the opera. Of course, the opera is "Pagliacci". Watch him 'cry'. Good Christ, this is DeNiro!!! They're up to something here. There's just no way I believe that they're expecting us to take this seriously.
- Ness's 'confrontation' with Capone. "Cmon, you wanna fight? You and me right here? [whimpers]" I want to chuck my shoes at the TV when I see this - IF DePalma was sincere in choosing *those* takes I just don't know what to say....except that I hope he wasn't!

I give "The Untouchables" 7/10. Despite all of this stuff (or maybe because of it????) it SOMEHOW pulls itself through. When Ness exits that gloriously phony rain/sun Chicago backdrop I always find myself back to my original thoughts: what the hell???
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