To mark the 35th anniversary of the release of the instant classic The Untouchables, Paramount Home Entertainment has released a remastered 4K Ultra HD of the Kevin Costner starring Oscar winner. Now, Costner didn’t win that Academy Award, Sir Sean Connery did for his portrayal of the dyed in the wool Irish law enforcement officer, Jim Malone.
Brian De Palma directed the picture that also features Robert De Niro in a seismic turn as the complete and utter embodiment of the Chicago mob, Al Capone.
This was the 1930s and prohibition had taken hold of a country living through another “ion,” The Depression. Costner’s Eliot Ness, a federal agent could not have put a bigger target on his and his family’s backs with his announcement that he was investigating and being a nuisance to Capone and that justice will be knocking. It’s a question of when not if.
The 4K transfer is incredible as The Untouchables has never looked so good as it does with this Ultra HD release. It’s also a slice of sonic succulence as the audio has gotten an upgrade as well. Not that this should be a bell-weather for sound improvement, but two words—De Niro and a baseball bat—and let me tell you that sonically those two words come to life in the rawest, and thus realist, of manners.
When it comes to home video 4K upgrades, Paramount Home Entertainment has gone over and above with a vast majority of its releases—including Wayne’s World and The Wolf of Wall Street recently. Both those titles take place “today” and the “recent past,” whereas The Untouchables takes us back to the 1930s. The film looks terrific on UHD. There is an unreal amount of clarity to De Palma’s vision and that comes through every frame with the 4K upgrade. The man who gave us Dressed to Kill and Body Double knows how to intertwine suspense with incredibly strong character building. In fact, The Untouchables was easily De Palma’s most approachable film when it hit screens in 1987. This is before Mission: Impossible.
The thing about high definition is something I’ve held on to since the format debuted. “Warts and all…” take on a whole different meaning when dealing with 4K and with what De Palma achieves with his naked camera with the Depression-era landscape and the unquestionable good versus evil dynamic, the 4K The Untouchables is worth every single cent charged to have this in your collection. The nominated for four Oscars flick (Best Art Direction, Best Costume Design, Best Music, Original Score were its nominations and Connery deservedly walked onto the Oscar stage and accepted his Best Actor in a Supporting Role reveals so much with its hi-def release.
De Palma’s set decorator (Hal Gausman) and art director’s (William A. Elliott) diligence comes through at moments such as this, when the quality of 4K shows off the little things. They may be “small,” but with such vibrancy innate to the Ultra HD format, the below-the-line work can really shine in ways that were never even considered a half-decade ago.
When compared to the Blu-ray release of 2007, which if you think of it was when Blu-rays were just evolving into the infancy stage of its life. All the “proof” one needs is to press play and as De Niro sits in a barber’s chair and I won’t say anything more, plot-wise, but visually and sonically, this is a long overdue and worthy upgrade for one of the best films of the last several decades.
If the picture seems crystal clear, yet simultaneously gritty, that is absolutely on purpose with what De Palma dictates from the upgrade.
Another scene that has gone down in the halls of Hollywood history is the “baby carriage scene at the train station.” His previous work on films such as Blow Out inadvertently had De Palma constantly compared to Alfred Hitchcock. Not a bad person to aspire to be like as a storyteller, particularly in De Palma’s genre of choice. With the arrival of The Untouchables on 4K, I feel a vision has come full circle.
There are Hitchcockian salutes left and right and yes, something about the digital clarity and sonic richness adds layers in that department and sends the “Alfred Assessment” into the red. The 4K format also lets a filmmaker be a filmmaker. It stresses the shot, the scene and in a film such as The Untouchables, it is a match made in heaven. De Palma lays it all out there, puts all the players in to play, and then lets them collide like atoms being split apart. The train station/baby carriage scene is a feast for the eyes and ears and is the perfect embodiment of what De Palma achieves with this entire motion picture.
When kicking off the bonus features, first explore The Script, The Cast. The eighteen-and-a-half-minute featurette features De Palma and producer Art Linson having a nice chat about the genesis of the film and how the story got going and before they knew it—they had a film to shoot.
Production Stories is a nice cornucopia of “old” and “new” interviews of De Palma and his cinematographer, Stephen H. Burum (A.S.C.). Again, most of the principal actors don’t The cast interviews for this featurette are all previously used in previous releases, except for one new chat with Charles Martin Smith.
It’s hard to remember after 35 years, but in many ways, The Untouchables was successful in Reinventing The Genre. Burum, Smith, Linson, and De Palma all chime in as to how they all went the extra mile to ensure that what audiences witnessed with The Untouchables was as unique a theatrical experience as can be achieved.
I’d say… they succeeded.
A fresh set of interviews lands with The Classic, which finds the crew dissecting the film’s enormous triumphs and how it influenced and elevated their respective careers.
Film Grade: A
Bonus Features: B+