In 1987 Brian De Palma brought together an all star cast to tell the story of legendary gangster Al Capone. A well told gangster story is usually a sure hit in Hollywood and when you marry that well told story with Academy Award winning actors and a director who has plenty of experience directing gangster movies then you have yourself a hit movie on your hands. Brian De Palma is not only the director of the movie The Untouchables but he has also directed such successful gangster movies as Wise Guys and Scarface so the directing experience necessary to make The Untouchables a success was in place.

The cast for The Untouchables consists of several Oscar quality actors that helped to bring the story to life in a way that no other ensemble could do. The cast includes Sean Connery, Kevin Costner, Andy Garcia, and Robert Di Niro who plays Al Capone. All of those actors in their careers have either won an Oscar or have been nominated for an Oscar and the acting quality shows in the final product on the screen. When a movie is well written, well directed, and as well acted as The Untouchables it is easy to get lost in the story and that is what many people did throughout the world as The Untouchables was a critical and financial success. Sean Connery received the only Oscar nomination of his career, and subsequently the only Oscar win of his career, from his work in The Untouchables so it is easy to see why The Untouchables went on to become such a huge theatrical success.

It wasn’t just acting and directing that were of the highest quality in The Untouchables. The lengths to which the producers and actors went to make the movie look as realistic as possible also helped in its success. Many of the items seen in the Al Capone barbershop in the movie came from Al Capone’s actual barbershop and some were items owned by Capone himself. Robert Di Niro took his role as Al Capone very seriously as he not only insisted that he wear silk underwear just as the real Al Capone did even though they would never be seen on film, but Di Niro also found Al Capone’s original tailor and had all of the suits he wore in the movie made by Al Capone’s tailor. That is a level of realism that many movies never get to. They even had a real member of the Untouchables that actually pursued Al Capone as a consultant on the film. It is attention to detail such as this that made The Untouchables so successful.

One of the most famous scenes in American movies happens in The Untouchables when Elliot Ness, played by Kevin Costner, has a shootout in a Chicago train station with some of Al Capone’s men. Who could forget the scene of gangsters and agents shooting at each other while a baby carriage slowly rolls down the stairs? This was a Hollywood creation as this gun battle never took place in real life and the original plan was to have it happen on a vintage train but the studio would not pay for a vintage train so the scene was moved to the lobby of the train station. Sometimes being frugal can reap other rewards besides the obvious reward of a couple of extra dollars on the bottom line. Some of the greatest scenes in movies were created because the director needed to improvise due to a budget constraint and this was one of them.