Continuity mistake: When Eliot Ness is at Jim Malone's house for the first time, Malone's collar is opened, then buttoned, then open again.
The Untouchables (1987)
Directed by: Brian De Palma
Starring: Robert De Niro, Kevin Costner, Sean Connery, Andy Garcia
Continuity mistake: When Ness is "escorting" Nitti off the roof of the courthouse, watch the proximity of the two to the rooftop door. When the camera cuts from the edge of the roof to Nitti and Ness and then back to the edge of the roof, you can see that they went from close to the rooftop door to really far away from it.
Factual error: In the warehouse scene with the wooden crates with maple leaves, even though a correction has been submitted saying a maple leaf was valid, the real mistake is the type of maple leaf used. The film shows a modern graphic style of leaf that did not come into use until the 1960s and appeared on the new Canadian flag in 1965. In the time of Capone, the maple leaves used to depict things Canadian looked like actual maple leaves and not like a stylized graphic.
Trivia: Andy Garcia was originally brought in to read for Frank Nitti, but he asked if he could play George Stone instead.
Trivia: As the stroller is going down the stairs in the train station it is a reference to the staircase scene in "Battleship Potemkin" in which a stroller similarly falls down a flight of steps while the horrified mother looks on.
Jimmy Malone: He pulls a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue. That's the Chicago way!
Elliot Ness: I have one more thing to say. I know that many of you take a drink. What you've done before today is not my concern. But now we must be pure and I want you to stop. It's not a question of whether or not it's a harmless drink, it may very well be, but it's against the law, gentlemen, and as we are going to enforce the law, we must do first by example.
Question: How accurate is the portrayal of the Untouchables, when it comes to names and numbers? Were there actually only four of them? Do Garcia, Connery and Smith play actual people or fictive ones?
Question: What is the name of the song that the clown is singing when Sean Connery has just been shot?
Answer: 'Vesti La Giubba', an aria from the opera 'I Pagliacci'.
Question: In the scene where Malone is shot by Nitti, he crawls to a room and when Ness comes in he finally gets Ness to see the paper about the man coming into the train station. If that information was so vital why was he just roaming around his apartment instead of going to Ness to show him?
Answer: Ness was coming to Malone's apartment to discuss the information with him there, Nitti and his men just got there first.
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Answer: It's about 50% truth and 50% fiction. Ness, Al Capone, and Frank Nitty are real, of course, but the characters played by Connery, Garcia, and Smith are fictional. Ness started out with 50 candidates for his 'Untouchables' force. This was whittled down to 15 finalists and from that he selected 9 agents (none of which has the same name as the characters played by Connery, Garcia, and Smith). It's true that Capone was convicted for tax evasion. He was sentenced to 11 years in prison, but received an early release because he was in the last stages of syphilis. He died shortly after being released from prison.
raywest ★
Capone lived for 8 years upon his release from prison. The 8 years being slightly longer than the actual prison time he served, which was just over 7 years. He died, having the mental capabilities of a 12-year-old.