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I watched the first episode of "The Untouchables" tonight. It started off with a bang--the first Big Bad was Al Capone himself!
What can I say? Well to start with, this first episode was originally a two-part drama produced by Westinghouse Theater, and later edited into a movie for theatrical release. It's thus not so much a first episode as a ... pilot? Precursor? The production values were high, and there was some great cinematography (particularly of cars cruising the wet, neon-lit streets of nighttime Chicago, occasionally stopping to throw out a dead body). I could imagine HBO making something like it today--except, of course, there'd be more gore and the sex would be much more explicit!
Robert Stack was competent as Eliot Ness (since the script merely allowed him to be efficient and incorruptible, there wasn't much scope for anything more). I felt more engaged with the side-characters, such as Georgie, a hapless stool-pigeon, and his wife Brandy, a stripper. Best of all was Neville Brand as Al Capone. The screen sizzled when he turned up about halfway through the movie--about where the cliffhanger would have been in the original two-parter.
Well, justice was done in the end, and Al sent off to prison. It left me curious to see more, and hoping that the character of Ness gets fleshed out a bit more and the high production values are maintained. I give it 7/10, overall.
What can I say? Well to start with, this first episode was originally a two-part drama produced by Westinghouse Theater, and later edited into a movie for theatrical release. It's thus not so much a first episode as a ... pilot? Precursor? The production values were high, and there was some great cinematography (particularly of cars cruising the wet, neon-lit streets of nighttime Chicago, occasionally stopping to throw out a dead body). I could imagine HBO making something like it today--except, of course, there'd be more gore and the sex would be much more explicit!
Robert Stack was competent as Eliot Ness (since the script merely allowed him to be efficient and incorruptible, there wasn't much scope for anything more). I felt more engaged with the side-characters, such as Georgie, a hapless stool-pigeon, and his wife Brandy, a stripper. Best of all was Neville Brand as Al Capone. The screen sizzled when he turned up about halfway through the movie--about where the cliffhanger would have been in the original two-parter.
Well, justice was done in the end, and Al sent off to prison. It left me curious to see more, and hoping that the character of Ness gets fleshed out a bit more and the high production values are maintained. I give it 7/10, overall.
