Great Scene: “The Untouchables”

Late night. A quiet bridge. Ness and Malone meet for the first time.

Movie: The Untouchables (1987), screenplay by David Mamet

IMDb plot summary: AL CAPONE. He ruled Chicago with absolute power. No one could touch him. No one could stop him. — Until Eliot Ness and a small force of men swore they’d bring him down.

Scene Setup: Treasury Department agent Eliot Ness (Kevin Costner) is put in charge of leading the crusade against Capone and his empire. Ness’ initial strategy is to conduct raids using a large squad of uniformed officers, but his first attempt fails when he breaks into a warehouse storing umbrellas (although it is implied by Capone’s reaction to the newspaper headline about Ness’ mistake that it was indeed a liquor warehouse, but his men had been tipped off by the corrupt police chief, Mike Dorsett (Richard Bradford).

Here is the script version of the scene:

Here is the movie version:

This always struck me as David Mamet’s version of a ‘meet cute’. Apart from their intersection, the whole point of the scene is for Ness to get Malone’s name and department, so he can do this:

Interesting that in the script, the scene takes place not in a church, but in Ness’ office. The church works much better.

Great scenes, both of them.

By the way, I wrote a buddy cop project for Paramount called The Chicago Way. For about a month, it was greenlit. That was a terrific comedy which got lost in Development Hell.

For more in the Great Scene series, go here.