i want you to hit me as hard as you can...
In 1987 director Brian De Palma released his explosive gangster epic The Untouchables,
focusing on the violent battle between Al Capone and treasury agent Eliot Ness in 1930s Chicago.
Writer David Mamet adapted his screenplay from the 1957 novel written by Oscar Fraley but dictated
by Eliot Ness himself. The once-intrepid crime fighter, at that point living in Pennsylvania
broke and drunk, recounted his glory days while Fraley wrote and exaggerated everything said by
Ness. The book was released to wide acclaim, spawning a television show and revitalizing
Ness's name in the public consciousness. Sadly Ness would not be able to bask in his newfound
popularity as he died of a heart attack before the book's release. Many historians argue the
novel is rife with factual errors and dramatic liberties, but did Brian De Palma more accurately
depict the battle for the soul of Chicago or is his movie just as riddled with holes?
Find out what the [ __ ] really happened to this movie!
In 1920 a bill was signed into law banning the production transportation importation and sale of
alcoholic beverages throughout the United States. Prohibition as it was known remained in effect
until 1933. The incredibly unpopular law caused a massive boom in organized crime with the most
money flowing through larger cities like Chicago, which was home to one of the biggest peddlers of
illicit booze in the country, Al Capone. Big Al was racking up close to 100 million dollars a year
in sales - that's over one and a half billion when accounting for inflation. With so much cash on
the line, the Chicago mobster had to protect his territory and income through threats and violence,
and the city was trapped in the crossfire. In 1929 President Herbert Hoover made it his mission to
put Al Capone behind bars. Disgusted with the fact that a criminal was essentially running a major
American city, he approached famed U.S ,attorney George E. Q. Johnson to handle the situation.
George reached out to the federal treasury department to assist in taking the gangster down.
This is just about where the movie picks up. The year is 1930, booze is illegal and Al Scarface
Capone is the kingpin of Chicago. We meet Big Al, played by Robert De Niro, getting a shave in his
lavish room surrounded by journalists who hang on his every word. He's intimidating but also genial,
for whatever reason the press loves him. But the dark reality of Al's business is demonstrated soon
after. A drugstore owner, disappointed by the quality of Capone's green booze, refuses to buy
any more from one of the goons. The gangster exits on a cordial note but leaves behind his suitcase.
A young girl notices and rushes to return it, only for the case to explode, killing her and
decimating the entire store. Fortunately this scene was a work of fiction - while Capone was
a violent man and ruled through intimidation and extortion, there are no reported cases of
him ordering such an excessive hit on a lowly store owner. Such violent tactics were usually
reserved for rival gangs and higher-ups, and explosives were hardly ever used - because it's
not good for business. The green beer referred to in the scene was actually a genuine issue during
prohibition - if the homemade beer didn't ferment long enough, it developed a sour taste much like
green apples. The following day we meet treasury agent Eliot Ness, played by Kevin Costner. As
he reads about the bombing in the newspaper it fuels his anger and desperation to take
down Capone. We also meet his wife and later his daughter. In reality Ness didn't have a daughter,
only an adopted son, but that wasn't until the 1940s. Ness was married in 1929 to Edna Stahle,
but his wife in the film is never given a name so there's no way of confirming if this is her.
Chicago chief of police Mike Hughes gathers a group of reporters to introduce Eliot Ness.
The journalists doubt that Ness will be very effective and even the chief looks unsure.
In real life, Mike Hughes was the chief of police at the time and despite his doubtful
attitude in the movie he was actually a supporter of Ness and his actions to take down Capone - as
a matter of fact he hired hundreds of officers in an effort to stop the flow of booze in his city.
And Eliot Ness was certainly the straight arrow he's made to appear in the movie,
garnering a reputation as a boy scout. Eliot's first chance to prove himself comes with a planned
raid on one of Capone's secret warehouses. So i hope that you've signed on for some action,
gentlemen. Because you're going to get it. Ness and a small army of officers wait until a shipment
of booze arrives and then ram the doors and flood the building. unfortunately for Ness, Capone's
henchmen were tipped off. All they find inside are crates filled with umbrellas. It's a total
disaster. While the real Ness definitely didn't bat a thousand when it came to busting shipments,
this particular episode was fictionalized for the film. Typically Ness would raid speakeasies
in warehouses that produced the booze rather than buildings that simply stored them. After
the drop-offs , Ness and his men would follow the delivery trucks back to the production sites and
carry out the raids there. It got to the point where Capone actually had to transport barrels
of booze in small cars since they were harder to track, which severely limited his revenue.
However, the shock and awe tactic of literally plowing through doors was accurate - it gave the
goons no time to run or hide any of their illegal product. Disappointed with his failure, Ness
takes a stroll down a dark bridge that night and encounters beat cop Jimmy Malone, played by Sean
Connery and his only Oscar-winning performance. It's a chance meeting that will ultimately change
the course of Ness's efforts against Capone. But this is also total fiction - Jimmy Malone
was a Hollywood creation loosely based on another Irish-American member of the real Untouchables,
Marty Lahart. Ness and Lahart already had history together so they were familiar with each other,
and he was only a few years older than Ness, unlike the mentor character he's made out to be
in the film. The next day, Ness returns to work to find his fellow officers mocking his failed raid.
But he's also approached by the mother of the girl who died in the opening explosion. She thanks him
for the work he's doing. Her words reinvigorate Ness and his quest for justice. This prompts him
to visit Malone's apartment, where he begs him to help take down Capone. But Malone declines.
While it's possible that Ness visited those affected by Capone's violence, this particular
case involves the mother of a fictional daughter. Furthermore, the film makes it seem like Ness was
unwanted in the police department but that simply wasn't the case - he was well respected and from
the get-go his intentions of building a team to catch Capone was well known. While not every
cop supported his efforts, especially those in Capone's pocket, he wasn't the laughingstock of
the office. And finally, Marty Lahart, the person Malone was based on, joined the crew with little
hesitation. The next day, Eliot Ness meets Oscar Wallace, an accountant who was sent by treasury
to track Capone's financial records with the hopes of nailing him on tax evasion or some other form
of financial fraud. Ness plays along but clearly looks frustrated by the new direction his bureau
is taking. Although Wallace was a fictional character, he was based on Frank Wilson,
a treasury accountant who was instrumental in taking down Capone - arguably more so than Ness.
While Ness was in the streets busting down doors and taking names, Wilson combed over hundreds of
records with his partner Elmer Irie, not seen in the movie, looking for any evidence that could
possibly incriminate Capone. Ness was an important part of the actual operation but his role was
described almost as PR - he posed for pictures raised morale and hit Capone where it hurt,
all while Frank Wilson slowly sowed the seeds of Capone's downfall. The men also never worked
together like they do in the movie - they were part of two totally separate investigations.
However, the idea to catch Capone on tax fraud was 100 percent true - Prohibition was wildly
unpopular. People wanted booze and they wanted to gamble, so Capone was providing desired services,
making him something of a necessary evil in the eyes of citizens. Not only that,
but Capone opened soup kitchens during the Great Depression, which helped his standing
in the community. The prosecuting attorneys feared a jury would let Capone go on bootlegging charges,
and since there was no way to connect him to the many murders he undoubtedly ordered, the best way
to go was tax evasion, because if there was one thing everyone hated, it was a wealthy cheat who
didn't pay his taxes. After meeting Oscar Wallace, Ness is visited by Malone, who's reconsidering his
offer. They head to a church to talk business because as Malone states, These walls have ears.
It is true that Capone had a lot of police in his pocket, so it probably wasn't a good idea to talk
to business out in the open like that, but the real Ness never made a blood oath to take down
Capone. Ness's intentions were very clear from the beginning, there was no need to hide it.
To find more help, Malone and Ness head to the police academy to recruit a cadet that hasn't yet
fallen under Capone's thumb. This is where they meet George Stone aka Giuseppe Petri, a proud
officer with superior integrity and weapon skills. While George Stone never existed in reality, it is
true that Ness looked for men who were honest and fresh. He also required a well-rounded team with
special talents - wiretappers for spying, drivers for tailing shipments, and marksmen for, well,
shooting. He also demanded they be young single and capable of enduring long hard hours of work,
as he mentions in the movie. And while the film portrays the Untouchables as a tenacious quartet,
they were actually about 10 of them, with a few others dropping in and out for various reasons.
With his small team assembled, Ness raids the nearby post office, which doubles as a booze
storage facility. The goon running the place argues but Malone shuts him up. They impound
the booze and inform the workers they're all under arrest. It's a much needed victory for the men.
It also never happened - there are no reports that Capone ever stored booze in United
States postal offices. While some officials looked the other way in certain situations,
Capone never utilized federal buildings to hide his hooch. The Chicago government wasn't that
corrupt, and the film overemphasizes the power Capone had over the city.
This massive bust unsurprisingly doesn't sit well with Capone.
In one of the movie's most memorable scenes, the crime boss invites all his high-ranking men,
including the one who was in charge of the raided post office, to a fancy banquet. Enthusiasms.
Enthusiasms. After a riveting speech about baseball and teamwork, he takes out his
frustration on the skull of the sorry goon that failed him. While this scene may seem
over-dramatic, it's actually based in truth. It didn't happen at a dinner as shown in the movie,
but Capone did actually beat three men to death with a baseball bat. These were high-ranking
officials in his organization, but they weren't killed because they lost a lot of booze and money
but because they were conspiring to kill Capone and take over. The next day, the men meet another
Capone crony who offers Ness a bribe. Despite the substantial amount of money - more than Ness was
making in a year - he rejects the henchman's offer. The goon threatens all of them, asking:
You fellas are untouchable, is that the thing? No one can get to you?
It is true that Ness was known for rejecting bribes on numerous occasions,
the only factual misstep here is that the men got their name Untouchables from reporters, not a
Capone accomplice. That night, Ness is confronted by Capone's enforcer Frank Nitti outside his home.
After Nitti makes veiled threats, Ness rushes inside but finds his wife and daughter safe,
and immediately has them escorted out of town. But as mentioned before, Ness didn't have a daughter
to threaten, though it is possible and probably likely that his wife received a few threats. Not
long after, Malone and Stone arrived with a tip on a huge alcohol shipment coming in from Canada.
If they intercept it they could gain information that could help finally put Capone away. The men
immediately fly to the Canadian border, teaming with Mounties to await the shipment. After a few
anxious hours, the booze trucks roll in. But the Canadian troopers jump the gun and instigate a
bloody battle on the border bridge. When the smoke clears, the men are able to stop the shipment and
capture a low-level bookkeeper in possession of a ledger that might include incriminating evidence
on Capone. When the bookkeeper won't decode the information, Malone pretends to execute
another goon to get the bookkeeper to comply. The Untouchables finally have what they need,
even if it wasn't obtained in a legal sense of the word. Yeah well you're not from Chicago.
While this whole sequence is certainly thrilling, it's also total fiction. Ness and his crew of men
never carried out missions that far from Chicago, nor joined Mounties to take down bootlegger
caravans. For the most part Capone's supply of booze - when he wasn't making it in the Chicago
area - came over the Canadian border through New York and was then driven to the Windy City.
As for Malone's ruthless intimidation tactics, based on Ness's boy scout reputation it's unlikely
he would ever allow anything so brutal. This scene is also critical as the men receive a
key piece of evidence that will eventually lead to Capone's end: his money ledger. This is all
false. The truth is that Frank Wilson and Elmer Irie meticulously combed through every document
even remotely related to the mob boss until they came across receipts from a greyhound race track
in Florida that Capone had a large interest in. They eventually got hold of the track's ledgers,
which noted multiple large payouts to someone known only as Al. Wilson spent weeks looking
through documents to find a handwriting sample that matched those in the ledger. Miraculously
he did, which led them to a bookie named Leslie Shumway, who agreed to testify against Capone.
Further investigation led Wilson to a man named Fred Reis, who frequently made large cash deposits
at a bank in a Chicago suburb. Reis then converted the money into cashier's checks and funneled it
back to Capone. When captured, Reis also agreed to testify, though it took some convincing.
I'll tell you what you want to know! Now that Ness and his crew have enough evidence to bring
Capone to trial, a subpoena is issued against the crime boss. With the bookie's life in danger,
Wallace takes him into protective custody, unaware the escorting officer is Frank Nitty in disguise.
Ness finds the two men in the precinct elevator, murdered by Nitti. While this scene is powerful,
it's another Hollywood creation - Capone never ordered hits against police officers,
let alone federal agents. It would attract too much heat on his operation. Besides,
bribes were usually much more effective - money talks. However, it is reported that Capone
ordered a hit on Frank Wilson, who the Wallace character is based on, but called it off when
realizing that if his hitmen were captured they could potentially rat him out and damn
him to a life in prison. In a fit of rage, Ness hurries over to Capone's hotel and confronts him,
attempting to draw his gun before being restrained by Malone and escorted out of the hotel.
In reality, the first time Capone and Ness met was at his trial. With their star witness dead,
the district attorney announces he's going to drop the case unless they can find and capture Capone's
head bookkeeper, a man by the name of Walter Payne. Malone bloodies his knuckles getting
information from the police chief while Ness tries to stall the D.A., who doesn't want to risk his
reputation. There's a lot of fabrication here - neither Shumway nor Reis were killed, so the trial
proceeded as planned with those witnesses. The actual D.A. wasn't worried about his reputation
and in fact did everything to ensure that Capone received the maximum prison sentence.
And real police chief Mike Hughes never acted as an informant for the Untouchables. Everything from
Wallace's assassination to the geriatric back alley brawl was false. That night Malone is
visited by an incompetent killer, only to find Frank Nitti waiting outside with a Tommy gun.
Somehow Malone survives the hail of bullets just long enough to give crucial information to Ness.
It's a powerful scene and Sir Sean truly sells it, but you guessed it, it's a work of fiction.
The real-life Malone, Marty Lahart, survived his time as an Untouchable and actually outlived Ness.
And again, Capone never ordered hits on officers or feds, it was the surest way to bring his
own operation down. Ness and Stone rush to the train station to intercept the bookkeeper Payne
before he gets out of town, but things go sideways and in one of the movie's most famous scenes
a massive bloody gunfight erupts while a baby carriage bounces down the marble staircase.
The Untouchables are able to safely secure the baby and Payne, who is forced into testifying.
It's a glorious scene based on exactly zero facts. Director Brian De Palma had actually
envisioned the climactic shootout on a moving train, but by then the production schedule and
budget had been nearly exhausted and the iconic replacement sequence was improvised in a few days.
The baby carriage rolling down the staircase paid homage to the 1925 film Battleship Potemkin.
With Payne secured, the evidence against Capone seems to spell his doom. But the gangster clearly
has an ace up his sleeve. Ness notices that Frank Nitti is packing heat in the courtroom
and asks a nearby officer to escort Nitti out of the room, only to learn he has a permit to carry.
Disappointed, Ness returns the gun but pieces together that Nitti was Malone's assassin. Nitti
flees, exchanging fire with Ness and rushing to the courthouse roof until the enforcer is
captured. Ness tries to do the right thing but Nitti provokes the federal agent and he winds up
taking the express elevator to the street. None of this actually happened - the only truthful moment
in the scene is Nitti's gun. He was escorted out and searched and he did have a signed note from
the mayor, but the ensuing gunfight and his death were all made up. As a matter of fact,
when the real Capone went to prison, Frank Nitti succeeded him and took over his entire operation.
Back in the courtroom lobby, Stone hands new evidence to Ness - the jurors in the case
have been bribed. Ness approaches the judge and convinces him to switch the juries. Bewildered and
furious, Capone lashes out at his attorney, who promptly pleads guilty on the crime lord's behalf.
The courtroom erupts and Ness confidently exits, knowing his job is done and Capone is finished.
While most of this scene is fictionalized, there is some truth buried in it. For starters,
it was discovered that jurors were bribed but it was Frank Wilson who brought it to the attention
of the judge, who immediately switched the juries. And since it was the IRS that brought the case to
court, Ness was not involved with the trial in any capacity, except maybe as a spectator. The
real Al Capone was eventually sentenced to 11 years in federal prison on three counts
of felony tax evasion and two misdemeanor counts of failing to file a tax return.
With Big Al behind bars, the Untouchables went their separate ways, the way Ness and Stone do
at the end of the movie. But fortunately all of the real Untouchables survived through the
end of the trial. So there's the truth behind The Untouchables. While it is a wonderful and
thrilling Hollywood movie, it practically rewrites every aspect of the actual story.
It glorifies and greatly exaggerates Ness's role in taking down Al Capone and severely
overshadows the hard work carried out by Frank Wilson, who was more instrumental in Capone's
downfall than Ness ever was. David Mamet and Brian De Palma took major liberties when
crafting this film and despite how exciting it is, The Untouchables is more fiction than fact!
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