So that's where I left that...

I’m sick to fucking death of things breaking down, but we’re not going to get into that right now.

Right now, I’m having way too much fun being distracted by the fact that I’d forgotten just how good the movie The Untouchables really is. This is the kind of pleasure one feels when finding a $20 bill in a jacket you haven’t worn since last winter. This little gem of a flick from 1987 shows you just how much fun a good movie can be to watch. The film is a dramatization of the story of Elliot Ness and his team of Chicago police that brought down Al Capone. Sure, it’s based on a true story and set in a very important period in American history (the part where Congress decided that telling everyone that they couldn’t drink anymore would somehow make them less violent), but the movie doesn’t pistol-whip you with that fact. The storytelling is great, and I mean brand-new-baby-kitten-asleep-on-your-neck great. The dialog doesn’t come across as pleased with itself when it’s clever, the sentimental parts aren’t sticky sweet and when there’s an action-hero punch line (you know- step 1) kill bad guy, step 2) say something cute about the way you did it) you feel amused instead of annoyed.

You’ve got Sean Connery playing a character appropriate to both his age and inexpugnable accent. You’ve got Kevin Costner playing Elliot Ness doing a Kevin Costner impersonation, which is how most of his good roles usually work. Come to think of it, I guess that’s one thing they both have in common. Neither Kevin nor Sean can stop playing himself, no matter how much the role demands otherwise (or as Cary Elwes put it, “Unlike some other Robin Hoods, I can speak with an English Accent.”) So you’ve got a rare situation where two “name” actors are in the right parts for the right movie, then you’ve got two actual actors actually playing other people, namely Andy Garcia as an street smart Italian cop and Robert DeNiro doing an Al Capone slightly tinged with his title character at the end of Raging Bull, and something metaphorically approaching chemistry begins to happen.

I put more than a little blame for this wonderful state of things on director Brian DePalma. A lot of people have said a lot of things about him, but in brief, he’s known as a person quite taken with Alfred Hitchcock’s style of doing things. Whether or not you think that’s a good thing in general, in this case it’s beautiful to watch. The story unfolds, nay, unfurls like a gorgeous flag from America’s past, notable for its fewer stars. It twists and turns with changes in the plot or wind, yet always hangs firmly on its pole dug half its height again into a concrete premise. Characters develop. When they fail to, it’s because they’re dead. You care when the un-gratuitous violence takes its toll on the cast, but you are comforted knowing both their mission and the movie make progress as a result of their sacrifice or brutal elimination. DePalma’s, which is to say, Hitchcock’s style adds an honest tension and keeps your attention held like a breath in your chest as you wonder, I’ll repeat that for emphasis, wonder what will happen next. Hell, even the music is exceptional.

Rather than continuing to gush like a stabbed belly (which I could do for some time since I have two plus gallons of blood left in me), I’ll take the opportunity to transition into how the presence of quality in this film makes it’s absence felt in many of the other films I’ve choked down with popcorn and watery soda. Why should wondering what happens next be a novel experience when watching a film? When did having someone tell you something you didn’t already know become perceived as a bad thing for the average filmgoer? I mean, this has to be coming from somewhere and being rewarded somehow.

Remember when movie trailers weren’t Cliff’s Notes encapsulations of the films they advertise? This idea that we might resent not being able to predict every event in the movie, which we’re watching in the first place mostly because we’ve never seen it before, is incongruent on it’s smarmy little face. I’ve seen movies telegraph their punches so badly; they’ve sent me emails describing how they end before I even got in the car to go to the theater. If you dress the murderer in a mystery in a black top hat and give him a thick curly mustache to with his evil cackle, you have practically prevented me from figuring out that he did it because you’ve already told me he’s the villain. You have presented me with a clumsy set of cultural signals my simian brain is designed to interpret. How is that supposed to make me feel smart? I might as well congratulate myself for being able to read. Sure these kinds of visual shorthand are useful to establish elements quickly enough to make a larger point, but they serve piss-poorly as points in and of themselves.

David Mamet wrote in his book Three Uses of the Knife that drama is an expression of the survival mechanism in our brain that interprets sequences of things into cause and effect. I think the underlying point here is that your brain has to be under the impression that something is up for debate or worthy of investigation for your attention span to stay focused and for this pattern sorting instinct to reward you with “fun”. Once you’re aware that there’s a little man behind the curtain pushing and pulling levers, it’s pretty damn hard to take the glowing head with the booming voice seriously.

Poorly written, acted and directed films violate these expectations by calling the harsh, glaring light of attention from the illusion of a situation and put it squarely on the artifice failing to create the illusion. The landing sequence at the beginning of Saving Private Ryan may not make you feel like you’re on Omaha Beach fifty years ago, but it can fool part of your brain into thinking it’s watching an actual, meaningful situation. A direct to video porn called Saving Ryan’s Privates, on the other hand, would probably be a contrived excuse to depict an actual series of sexual acts between attractive but terrible “actors”, and as such, the lousy costumes, sets and dialog get in the way of watching the porn, and therefore call attention to themselves.

So, films like The Untouchables work because their parts all pull smoothly together in rhythm like a well-oiled machine and give the attention you put towards watching it the appearance of a complete and compelling thing. Only in retrospect do the well-designed parts come into any conspicuous focus. Films like Star Wars Episode One: The Phantom Menace give you jarring speed bumps, gaping plot holes and bad directions, which leave you the impression you have survived a series of incidents rather than gone on a single contiguous journey punctuated with memorable events.

I’m begging you, Hollywood: There is a veritable litany of movies that do this well. Try imitating the craft of them rather than aping their specific parts.