The Untouchables (1987)

Nobody Gets Off This Staircase: Krissy, Nathan, and Pete Take On The Untouchables

Welcome to this episode of The Most Excellent 80s Movies. Hosts Krissy Lenz and Nathan Blackwell are joined by special guest Pete Wright—podcast impresario and pod boss at TruStory FM—to dig into Brian De Palma's The Untouchables (1987), where the real question isn't whether Al Capone goes down, but how far a straight-arrow fed is willing to bend to make it happen.

The central tension here is a juicy one: Kevin Costner's deliberately bland Elliot Ness surrounded by Sean Connery's full-voltage Obi-Wan energy and Andy Garcia's silk-jacketed handsomeness. Is Costner's wooden earnestness a character choice or just… Costner being Costner? The gang has feelings. Meanwhile, Pete makes a compelling case that David Mamet is at his very best when someone else is in the director's chair—and that De Palma's camera (hello, split diopter) transforms stilted period dialogue into something genuinely cinematic.

What keeps the conversation sparking is the sheer audacity of the filmmaking: an improvised staircase sequence that became the movie's most iconic scene, Armani-clad gangsters that make everyone want to buy overcoats for a city they don't live in, and a baby carriage that shows up twice in two consecutive episodes of the pod. The episode stays premise-level throughout, so you can jump in clean and still feel every gut punch.

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If you could only pick one scene from this movie to show someone who'd never seen it, which one would you choose—and why?

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