Kevin Costner’s Eliot Ness in The UntouchablesImage via Paramount Pictures
It isn’t often when two of the most respected critics of their generations are united in their dismissal of a movie that most others swear by, but that’s what happened in 1987. Director Brian De Palma rounded up a star-studded cast for an epic gangster movie with Western overtones; the movie was a major box-office hit, grossing nearly $190 million worldwide against a reported budget of $25 million. It was also honored with four Oscar nominations, winning in the Best Supporting Actor category. Despite the high pedigree on display — the music was composed by the legendary Ennio Morricone and the script was written by David Mamet — the movie was given negative reviews by Pauline Kael and Roger Ebert.
Kael and Ebert remain perhaps the most well-known critics of their respective eras, but for a brief moment in time, their careers overlapped, and they found themselves largely agreeing about De Palma’s The Untouchables. It was the first time that De Palma made a feature based on a popular television series; the second was Mission: Impossible. The movie featured Kevin Costner as a law enforcement agent during Prohibition, who rounds up a ragtag team to take down notorious gangster Al Capone, played by Robert De Niro. The movie also featured a memorable supporting performance by Sean Connery, who played a veteran beat cop recruited by Costner’s character for the elite task force.
Collider Exclusive · Taylor Sheridan Universe Quiz Which Taylor Sheridan Show Do You Belong In? Yellowstone · Landman · Tulsa King · Mayor of Kingstown
Four worlds. All of them brutal, complicated, and built on power, loyalty, and the price of survival. Taylor Sheridan doesn’t write heroes — he writes people who do what they have to do and live with the cost. Ten questions will reveal which one of his worlds you were made for.
🤠Yellowstone
🛢️Landman
👑Tulsa King
⚖️Mayor of Kingstown
01
Where does your power come from? In Sheridan’s world, everyone has leverage. The question is what kind.
02
Who do you put first, no matter what? Loyalty in Sheridan’s universe is always absolute — and always costly.
03
Someone crosses a line. How do you respond? Every Sheridan protagonist has a line. What matters is what happens after it’s crossed.
04
Where do you feel most in your element? Sheridan’s worlds are as much about place as they are about people.
05
How do you feel about operating in the grey? Nobody in a Sheridan show has clean hands. The question is how they carry the dirt.
06
What are you actually fighting to hold onto? Every Sheridan character is fighting a war. The real question is what they’re defending.
07
How do you lead? Authority in Sheridan’s world is never given — it’s established, maintained, and constantly tested.
08
Someone new arrives and tries to change how things work. Your reaction? Every Sheridan show has an outsider disrupting an established order. Sometimes that outsider is you.
09
What has your position cost you? Nobody gets to where these characters are without paying for it. The bill is always personal.
10
When it’s over, what do you want people to say? Sheridan’s characters all know the ending is coming. The question is what they leave behind.
Sheridan Has Spoken You Belong In…
The show that claimed the most of your answers is the world you were built for. If two tied, both are shown — you’re complicated enough to straddle two Sheridan universes.
🤠 Yellowstone
🛢️ Landman
👑 Tulsa King
⚖️ Mayor of Kingstown
You are a Dutton — or you might as well be. You understand that some things are worth protecting at any cost, and that the modern world’s indifference to history, to land, to legacy, is not something you’re willing to accept quietly. You lead from the front, you carry your family’s weight without complaint, and when someone threatens what’s yours, you don’t escalate — you finish it. You’re not cruel. But you are absolute. In Yellowstone’s world, that combination of ferocity and loyalty doesn’t make you a villain. It makes you the only thing standing between everything that matters and everyone who wants to take it.
You thrive in the chaos of high-stakes negotiation, where the money is enormous, the margins are thin, and the wrong word in the wrong room can cost everyone everything. You’re a fixer — the person called when a situation is already on fire and needs someone with the nerve to walk into it. West Texas oil country rewards exactly what you are: sharp, adaptable, unsentimental, and absolutely clear-eyed about what people want and what they’ll do to get it. You’re not naive enough to think this world is fair. You’re smart enough to be the one deciding who it’s fair to.
You are a Dwight Manfredi — someone who has served their time, paid their dues, and arrived somewhere unexpected with nothing but their reputation and their wits. You adapt without losing yourself. You build loyalty through respect rather than fear, though you’re not above reminding people that the two aren’t mutually exclusive. Tulsa King is for people who are still standing when everyone assumed they’d be finished — who find, in an unfamiliar place, that they’re more capable than the world gave them credit for. You don’t need a throne. You build one, wherever you happen to land.
You carry the weight of a system that is broken by design, and you do it anyway — because someone has to, and because you’re the only one positioned to do it without the whole thing collapsing. Mike McLusky’s world is for people who are comfortable operating where there are no good options, only less catastrophic ones. You speak every language: law enforcement, criminal, political, human. That fluency makes you invaluable and it makes you a target. You’ve made your peace with both. Mayor of Kingstown belongs to people who understand that keeping the peace is not the same as being at peace — and who do the job regardless.
Here’s How Long You Have Left to Watch ‘The Untouchables’ on Peacock
The Untouchables holds an 83% critics’ score and an 89% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes. The aggregator website’s consensus reads, “Slick on the surface but loaded with artful touches, Brian De Palma’s classical gangster thriller is a sharp look at period Chicago crime, featuring excellent performances from a top-notch cast.” Kael noted in her review for the New Yorker that The Untouchables “is not a great movie; it’s too banal, too morally comfortable. The great gangster pictures don’t make good and evil mutually exclusive, the way they are here.” In his review for the Chicago Sun-Times, Ebert criticized the script and the performances, particularly the scenes revolving around Capone. “De Niro comes onscreen with great dramatic and musical flourish, strikes an attitude, says a line, and that’s basically the whole idea,” he wrote.
You can make up your own mind about the movie on Peacock, but remember that it will be removed from the platform on July 1. Stay tuned to Collider for more updates.
