The Untouchables: Difference between revisions

=== The TV show contains examples of: ===

* [[The Big Bad]]: Capone, even after he is incarnerated, remains the puppet master.

* [[Clean Up the Town]]

* [[Cop Show]]

* [[The Fettered]]: Ness.

* [[Film Noir]]: Or television noir, more accurately.

* [[Framing Device]]: Winchell's narration often gives the impression of watching a visual interpretation of a printed newspaper article.

* [[The Great Depression]]

* [[Just a Stupid Accent]]: Capone speaks in a heavy Italian accent, despite the fact that the real Capone was born in Brooklyn and spent his entire life in the United States.

* [[Incorruptible Pure Pureness]]: Natually. Played totally without irony in the series. Doesn't stop the criminals from making routine offers, though.

* [[Batman Gambit]]: {{spoiler|Ness bluffs the judge overseeing Capone's trial to switch juries (as Capone's had been bribed), by telling the judge his name was in the ledger listing all of Capone's payouts. The DA notes that they didn't find the judge's name in that ledger...}}

* [[Batter Up]]: Al Capone famously used a baseball bat to savagely murder one of his subordinates.

* [[Big Bad]]: Capone, of course.

* [[Berserk Button]]: Eliot Ness {{spoiler|flips and throws Frank Nitti off a building when he gloats about killing Jim Malone}}.

** As the film goes on, it turns into [[Black and Gray Morality]] as Ness uses more questionable means to bring down Capone.

* [[Blood Brothers]]: Malone takes Ness to a church, where they talk about a [[Blood Oath]] and Malone tells Ness they are now bounded by it.

* [[Car Cushion]]: {{spoiler|Frank Nitti after being thrown off the roof by Eliot Ness.}}

* [[Chekhov's Gunman]]: The mobster with the bowtie. He is seen several times, particularly when he {{spoiler|lures Malone out to be shot by Nitti}} and is later the one who takes the bookkeeper hostage on the train station steps {{spoiler|and gets shot by Stone}}.

* [[Put Down Your Gun and Step Away]]: Subverted.

* [[Reliably Unreliable Guns]]: The tommy gun of one gangster jams during a fight. ([[Truth in Television]]: a problem real tommy guns were frequently subject to, which is one of the many reasons it was never as popular as gangland movies would have you believe.) To the gangster's credit he tries repeatedly to clear the jam, but it gives the mousy accountant among the Untouchables time to get close enough to KO him with the butt of his shotgun.

* [[Shotguns Are Just Better]]: With the exception of the occasional Tommy Gun, the Untouchables wield pump-action shotguns as their main long arms.

* [[Shout Out]]: The baby carriage rolling down the stairs in Union Station is a direct homage to the famous "Odessa Steps" sequence in Sergei Eisenstein's 1925 masterpiece [[The Battleship Potemkin]].

* [[Took a Level In Badass]]: Oscar, the federal accountant assigned to Ness's team. More an office worker than a field agent, he takes to wielding a shotgun pretty quickly and gets a few Moments of Asskickery during the Canadian border raid.

* [[Tragic Keepsake]]: {{spoiler|Malone's keychain.}}

** Let us note that the guy being brutally interrogated was already DEAD when Malone splattered his brains out. The only person that KNOWS said crook is dead is Ness, being the man who killed him quite thoroughly a few moments ago. That is to say, the RCMP officer fell for it as well as the hood.

{{quote| '''RCMP Captain''': ''I do not approve of your methods.''<br />

'''Eliot Ness''': ''Yeah, well... You're not from [[Crapsack World|Chicago]].'' }}

** Even if the Mountie knew that it was a dead man (since the movie only shows clearly that the reluctant gangster isn't aware that Malone is interrogating a corpse), many would find it a questionable method of doing policework.

* [[What You Are in The Dark]]: Ness is sorely tempted to shoot Nitti during the rooftop chase, when it's just the two of them there. He decides against it and arrests Nitti instead. {{spoiler|But then Nitti [[Berserk Button|just had to go taunting]] about how Malone died by his hand, and how he'll still beat the rap...}}

* [[You Have Failed Me]]: Al Capone beats one of his goons to death with a bat.

* [[Guns Akimbo]]: Subverted when the senior member confronts a villain who framed him. The villain tries to resist with twin tommy guns. However, the idiot doesn't realize that given how heavy the gun type is, he can't even keep them level and so doesn't do much more than shoot up the floor in front of him with a lot of noise. For his part, the Untouchable simply shoots the villain with two carefully aimed pistol shots.

** In the 1980s version, 'George Stone' has two guns on him at the train station when they separate. Stone notices Eliot has run out of ammunition, charges in, and passes Eliot one of his own pistols.

 

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