The Untouchables: Shooting Up the Box Office

Ripe violence and gangster flash make The Untouchables the new sleeper hit

Here's a picture with no space wars, no music videos, no cute beasties, no bikinis. It is a period film in the wrong period. Kids want to go back to the '50s, not to Chicago during Prohibition. They weren't even born when this movie was a TV series. The producer, Art Linson, makes little pictures, and Brian De Palma directs naughty ones that rarely go gold. David Mamet writes Pulitzer-prizewinning plays, not boffo movies. O.K., so who's in the cast? Robert De Niro: his last hit was 1978's The Deer Hunter. Sean Connery: splendid actor, but the only time he's struck...

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