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The Untouchables

The Untouchables

List Price: $19.99
Your Price: $17.99
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 1 stars
Summary: The Worst DVD Transfer Job Imaginable
Review: A fabulous movie, but totally wasted on DVD. Paramount is only going for a money grab on this one. No features, shoddy sound quality. One measley trailer. All of this for a kings ransom in price. This DVD is simply not worth purchasing...Garbage!

Shame on Paramount for this obvious money grab. Next time spend more than 10 minutes on moving a masterpiece onto a terrific forum. You have done the movie no justice.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Flamboyant Tribute to the Chicago Mob
Review: This isn't a documentary style film - it's a gorgeous, over-the-top retelling of one of the most famous periods in America's history. Al Capone and Eliot Ness are well known, as is the Chicago in which they lived. De Niro and Connery are fantasic in their roles, and the cinematography is beautiful. Costner as Ness also shines, but with these other two powerhouses his performance is almost overshadowed.

Great plot, great dialogue, great action, the movie is definitely a fun romp through an appealing period in history. The movie has even more significance as The Sopranos becomes a huge hit - people being drawn into learning about the mob way of life want to trace the roots of this drama and see where it's taking its guidance. Many Sopranos scenes are taken from this movie, and the characters even quote it at times.

Highly recommended - a DVD you'll watch many times over!

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Excellent Movie
Review: I loved this movie. I remember seeing it when it first came out in the '80s. I will buy the DVD, too.

The entire movie is very good, however, there is one action sequence that I feel is one of the most memorable in theater history. It will leave you breathless and on the edge of your seat.

You won't regret watching this movie. Watch it, if only for that one scene.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Great movie... lousy DVD!
Review: Back in 1987, I had the opportunity to see an early "rough cut" of this film. There wasn't much fat at that time, and the final cut was ever so slightly tighter. It also helped that the music from "Silverado" had been replaced by Ennio Morricone's wonderful score for the final print.

The film itself is visually stunning. Even Costner's wooden performance seems to fit the character. (Though his trying to attempt a Chicago accent for brief moments becomes a bit funny after his "Robin Hood" stint.) Kudos to Sean Connery for turning in an Oscar winning performance against Costner. Andy Garcia and Charles Martin Smith round out the title team with great performances as well.

Then, there's Robert DeNiro as Al Capone. Say what you want about him playing the same type of character. The fact is, the man is a true talent as he proved with his recent turns in comedies like "Analyze This" and "Meet the Parents." As Olivier said: "...comedy is hard." His Capone is not subtle, but he's fun to watch.

Unfortunately, Paramount has once again decided to blow it on the DVD release. After "Braveheart" there was hope they might try and get with the program. But no! This DVD has no features. It's not like Brian DePalma is doing anything worthwhile. A couple of hours of studio time and you have a commentary track. Throw on a few trailers and storyboards and you have at least a decent DVD. Oh well.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: A Great Movie...
Review: ... but a horrible DVD. As a film alone, I would give it 5 stars. But this rating is for the DVD. Yes, we all know that The Untouchables is a great movie. It's one of DePalma's best, if not the best. Peformances by Costner, Connery, and DeNiro are top rate. Mamet pulls off a tight screenplay.

However, what about the features in this DVD? I mean isn't that why we buy DVD's over VHS? For the great bonus features? They waited for awhile to release The Untouchables on DVD and all we get is the standard set of options... chapter search, subtitles, widescreen, etc... What DVD doesn't have that already? Where are the deleted scenes, directory/actor commentary, making of film, storyboards, interviews, etc...? Any features on this DVD are scant and disappointing.

Being a huge fan of this movie, I was disappointed with this DVD. The lack of features makes me believe that they will issue a Collector's Edition in the future with all these great bonuses. If you already have the widescreen VHS version of The Untouchables, don't bother.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: One of My Favorites Films, but the DVD...
Review: ... definitely is a pass. Don't get me wrong. If I was rating just the film I would give it 5 stars, easily. Everyone knows this is one of DePalma's best. The performances are top notch and who can forget the train station scene. However since this rating is for the DVD, I have to give it 3 stars because the DVD is very disappointing for such a long awaited release.

There are very few bonus features on this DVD. When you look at other DVD's, you'll see director commentary, excluded scenes, production notes, interviews, actual shooting screenplay, etc... This has pretty much just the film with the basic DVD features such as captions and chapter search. Big deal. Every DVD has that.

For a film with such a huge fan base, this one comes up way short. If you already have the widescreen on VHS, don't bother with the DVD. With such few features, I'm expecting a Collector's Edition in the future. If you can be patient, I would wait until then.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: ..touchable?
Review: As an action film, it is one of the best. As a historical film... maybe not so good. Don't get me wrong. I think that this is one of the best movies of this past century. To be perfectly honest... I don't really care if this is historically correct or not. It's nice if you learn something as you watch but entertainment is really the main focus of these and especially this one movie. To those who rated these movies with such disdain and dissapointment due to it's historical incorrectness, all I wish to say to them is keep an open mind and don't ruin it for the other viewers. I for one learned more from this so called "historically incorrect" movie than those other movies that push historical facts an every scenerio. If I want to understand more about this I'll look it up in a book or something.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Where's the greatness everybody sees?
Review: I AM a die hard fan of Brian DePalma and Kevin Costner: I DO like Waterworld and The Postman, and I think that he (Costner) is great in this movie, but, am I the only one who can see how absurd the story and the dialogues are? Didn't anybody else see that the guy that's killed by Ness in the little cabin (Canadian border scene) fell the other side from where Sean Connery picked him up? This is not just a light comment, I wanted to like this movie so much that I watched it like three times, but this is just too much

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Why I won't buy this on DVD
Review: One star for what I admit is an AMAZINGLY great movie?! The reason - a DVD with no extras! It's organised crime itself! Even a short documentary on Al Capone might have saved it, but I wouldn't touch this with a ten foot pole.

Do like me and pray the distributors see some sense and rerelease it some day on DVD with some extra stuff! For now though I'm (unwillingly admittedly) boycotting it.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Well-crafted but missing something
Review: There's something resoundingly hollow about "The Untouchables," the Brian de Palma film of the Chicago-gangster era. It looks fantastic, but it manages to drain all the blood out of its subject and provide us with the most aseptic, Hollywood-ized version of the Capone saga imaginable. Consider:

* Al Capone was probably a fascinating man, but the movie doesn't know how to convey any of that. He's given brassy, vulgar dialogue and a few arch scenes, but that's it. We don't get a hint of how this man made his empire other than by smashing open heads with baseball bats (and you know that didn't work all the time).

* Elliot Ness. Again, a fascinating figure, a man who later in his career was convinced that his persecution of the Torso Killer was being stopped by men in high places. As played here by Kevin Costner, he seems like little more than the ur-Algore (with apologies to Al, who's quite a nice guy). His success in his persecution of Capone is attributed to a fictional character, the Sean Connery cop, rather than to any real ingenuity on his part.

* The movie takes the usual liberties with times, places, and events, but why do that when the original events were far more interesting than anything in this movie?

* The script, by David Mamet, is not his usual effort; it's bland and unconvincing. (One scene involving a snoopy photographer is so badly put together that it's amazing that the heroes don't get found out.) The only scene that really works involves a very creative use of a corpse, but it's a throwaway.

And so on. This isn't a bad movie, but it's loaded with holes that makes it difficult to enjoy -- and an ending so dismissive it plays like an afterthought. That's the last thing a muscular crime movie needs.


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