MovieChat Forums > The Untouchables (1987) Discussion > So many inaccuracies

So many inaccuracies

posted 12 years ago by deli584876
19 replies | jump to latest

1. The movie depicted Elliot Ness as a humble family man who was devoted to his wife and kids when in reality he was divorced twice and married three times. He also never had a daughter and his son was adopted.

2. They also portrayed Ness as being staunchly against alcohol when in reality he was an alcoholic.

3. Frank Nitti was not killed by being thrown off a courthouse building. He committed suicide in 1943.

4. Nitti was portrayed as being evil and sinister when according to reports, he was described as a pleasant man who smiled a lot.

5. There were not 4 untouchables, there were actually 11 and none of them were killed by Capone's men.

6. The accountant guy was a real person named Frank Wilson but he was not one of the untouchables and his investigations into Capone's tax evasion case were separate of Ness' investigations of Capone's violations of the Volstead Act. He was also not murdered nor did he ever shoot a gun.

7. The Hotel lobby brawl never happened considering that Ness and Capone never met each other in person before the trial.

8. Capone did beat his henchmen to death with a baseball bat but there were three victims not one.

9. Capone's lawyer never withdrew his plea of not-guilty to guilty. Capone initially plead guilty to income tax evasion expecting two and a half year sentence from a deal struck up with the prosecutor. When the judge denied the deal, Capone plead not-guilty and went to court and was found guilty.

10. Jim Malone and George Stone were completely fictional. Most of the untouchables were wire tapping specialists and expert undercover agents. Not elderly beat cops within months of retirement nor fresh faced kids right out of the academy.

[–] dyahrmarkt 12 years ago

None of these ten points bothered me in the slightest as far as their *conception* for the film is concerned. I am not worried about historical accuracy, nor should anyone when dealing with such a fictitious potboiler. I do, however, have MAJOR problems with the execution of many of these elements in the film.
5 -
Please nest your IMDB page, and respond to the correct person -

[–] MovieAlien 12 years ago

Big yawn at the troll complaints of "inaccuracy"... the film was based on a FICTIONALIZED TV series.

Adding to that, why aren't these trolls complaining about the historical "inaccuracies" of other gangster films based on real-life gangsters, e.g., GOODFELLAS, CASINO, BUGSY, DONNIE BRASCO, etc?

Puzzling.

[–] gwapng 11 years ago

Get out troll

[–] 11 years ago

[deleted]

[–] everydayboredom1980 12 years ago

I just take it as an entertaining film, the historical accuracy is ridiculously bad.

[–] Altho73 12 years ago

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Nitti was portrayed as being evil and sinister when according to reports, he was described as a pleasant man who smiled a lot.
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No members of the Mafia were ever pleasant men. The Mafia is an evil organisation dominated by scumbags and psychopaths.

[–] 12 years ago

[deleted]

[–] gl_76 12 years ago

At no point in this movie is it ever claimed that it is supposed to be historically accurate. It is simply based (very loosely) on past events and past characters with a splash of Hollywood applied to it in order to make it entertaining. Just enjoy it for what it is.

[–] manofsteel4455 12 years ago

I don't understand why people on boards like these are always pointing out the obvious. We all know that this is not a true story.

You want to play the game, you'd better know the rules, love.
-Harry Callahan

[–] leavetheguntakethecanoli 11 years ago

That darn Wikipedia ruins every "historical" movie!

[–] HijodelCid 11 years ago

As someone who takes historical fact very seriously I am very disturbed by all this fictionalization. The real Ness and Capone had very interesting lives, so all this fictionalization pollution is not necessary. To depict Ness, who never killed anybody, kicking Nitti off a rooftop is nothing short of plain slander!
God is subtle, but He is not malicious. (Albert Einstein)

[–] pking-2 11 years ago

Then you probably shouldn't pass time watching fictional movies.

Because, if you do so, you are likely going to encounter more "disturbing" fictionalization.

Now, this is a signature gun, and that is an optical palm reader.

[–] HijodelCid 11 years ago

I wasn't aware that Ness and Capone were fictional.

God is subtle, but He is not malicious. (Albert Einstein)

[–] pking-2 11 years ago

The Untouchables is fictional, which is fine and which you're already aware of. There are history books and documentaries and so on to cover other bases. Fictional movies are not that.

Otherwise, you'd be upset because Independence Day doesn't show Washington D.C. accurately, given that the city is shown to be target of alien annihilation, yet that's not true. Just about every story ever told is "upsettingly" inaccurate, if you pretend that the thingies in them which have real world counterparts must only be shown "accurately."

Now, this is a signature gun, and that is an optical palm reader.

[–] 11 years ago

[deleted]

[–] Trackmaster 11 years ago

Right, the difference between making the nitpickers happy and just making a documentary and making a Hollywood movie that people want to see is a few hundred million at the box office. I'm sure that people would have loved to see accountants run numbers the whole movie.

Although one of the main problems with this movie (and I think that this is a stereotype that this movie created) is that they came up with this brilliant idea to go after him for tax evasion after everything else failed. Prohibition itself was just a huge tax on alcohol. It was never criminal. Rich businessmen could drink all they want if they could accord it. The Federal government specifically tapped the IRS to enforce the laws because of the fact that it was nothing more than a tax. So it was logical that the IRS would be the ones that brought down Capone.

They never had any intention of getting him for the body count. It was always the financial aspect that they went after.

This was covered more realistically in Boardwalk Empire.

[–] pking-2 11 years ago

I wouldn't recommend anyone decide that they know the actual history of Ness, Capone, prohibition, the FBI, the IRS, and organized crime fighting based on The Untouchables.

On the other hand, The Untouchables is an enjoyable story (to me), and it does use some elements culled from the real world as basis, such as the existence of Ness, Capone, prohibition, etc... That's about it.

Now, this is a signature gun, and that is an optical palm reader.

[–] Trackmaster 11 years ago

It's basically a western. There's no way that a real agent would be involved in that many shootouts and bloodbaths, especially when the legal system was stacked against them. It's rare that a cop ever even fires his gun once in the field in his career.

[–] fountaincap 11 years ago

Despite all the inaccuracies, I just wanted to commend their attention to detail in at least one scene. When Ness and the bailiff empty Nitti's pockets outside the courtroom, they scatter some change on the table. It's only on screen for maybe a second, but I recognized the silver Standing Liberty quarter and Mercury dime that were in circulation in 1930. A lazier director might just have taken some spare copper-nickel 1980s change from the crew's pockets and used that.