"The Untouchables" Historical Accuracy Review

Jason Caprio

4-6-14

 The Untouchables Historical Accuracy Review

Any cinematic film that is about the American Mafia is always taken two ways, accurate or inaccurate. With the film The Untouchables, it makes some nice attempts at trying to be accurate with history, but they took one too many shots in the dark. It is understandable that making a movie one hundred percent accurate is near impossible, the film however would overlook or not look hard enough for factual evidence of the detailing and scenes of the movie.

First off, they did pull off a few scenes and details for the movie that may have not seemed important, but would be a big issue if they got it wrong, so there is some props to be given to the creators of this film. The main character in the movie was named correctly for one thing. If the film screwed up on this, the reviews of this movie would be lessened more than it already is. Elliot Ness, the man who organized the group was accurately stored in the movie along with the roles he played and how the character is portrayed.  There is even a scene when Capone beats one of his associates to death with a baseball bat. This is a fact that is partially true. Capone was known to have committed acts of assault with a baseball bat that were near fatal, but never one that took a life,(The Untouchables, Tunzelmann).

Next, though they did pull off some historical accuracy, they still bombed it over all. For all those that saw the movie, they would remember the accountant, one of “The Untouchables” and the one that discovered Capone’s income tax evasion. This is completely false. The accountant did not even discover the income tax evasion nor did he even exist. The one who did actually bring him down and discovered the income tax evasion was Frank J. Wilson. Most of the crew who are in The Untouchables did not really exist. The real untouchables were twice the amount than what is shown in the movie, and the group is extremely diverse,(Eig, Tunzelmann).

Finally, there is the whole plot of the movie. The Untouchables never had anything to do with Capone’s case of income tax evasion. They did partake in many brewery raids, but they never did anything with the case itself. There is Ness with his whole idea that no one is allowed to drink and that during the existence of the untouchables, he never took a sip of alcohol. This is misleading because the actual Elliot Ness was an alcoholic. Trying to make Elliot Ness look like he was a clean, always playing by the rules cop was a waste of the film maker’s time. The reason they did portray Elliot Ness as a rule follower was to make him look like the honest and strong protagonist who never went against his own rules, when in actuality, he did. Sure in the end of the movie he began to bend the rules a little bit, but the real Elliot Ness did this from the very beginning,(The Untouchables, Tunzelmann).

The Untouchables was a fairly well made movie. Everyone loves the scenes where the shoot outs are going on there is loads of action packed goodness going on, but that is the only one up that the movie gets. They messed up on the historical accuracy, even when they had plenty of information to use that was actual historical evidence; they still distorted the movie’s history. For those that want to see the movie for the action, by all means, knock yourself out, but if you are one who wants historical and factual evidence for on who the untouchables really are and what went on during the time, this is not the movie for you. 

Sources 

- Tunzelmann, Alex Von. "The Untouchables: Punch-drunk with inaccuracies." Theguardian.com 19 Mar. 2009. Guardian News and Media. 02 Mar. 2014 <http://www.theguardian.com/film/2009/mar/18/reel-history-the-untouchables>. 

- The Untouchables. Dir. Brian De Palma. Perf. Kevin Costner, Sean Connery, and Robert De Niro. Paramount Pictures, 1987. 

- Eig, Jonathan. Get Capone: The secret plot that captured America's most wanted gangster. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2010.