The Untouchables (1987) and Gangster Squad (2013)

Double bill: Brian De Palma’s “The Untouchables” with Elliot Ness versus Al Capone, and “Gangster Squad,” with L.A. cops against Mickey Cohen. Both are true cops-and-mobs stories repainted with Hollywood final blowout action scenes. Why allow Frank Nitti his suicide when Ness can toss him off a building? “Squad” plays looser with truth. 

Such is film. Facts hit the floor faster than bodies. In 200 words, my take downs on these mob take-down films.

“Untouchables” –- also based on the rah-rah TV show – follows Eagle Scout/U.S. Treasury agent Ness (Kevin Costner) as he brings in three like-minded heroes (Sean Connery as wise old cop, Andy Garcia as hothead cop, and Charles Martin Smith as nerd cop) to nail Robert De Niro’s Capone. Smart casting and smart-looking film. 

It smells of Chicago and spent bullets. De Palma and screenwriter David Mamet put us in gorgeous locales -– trains station, courthouses, and filthy red alleyways. Dialogue pops like spent lead: Connery barking about knives at a “gun party” is classic. 

I was 13 in ’87 and this became my Instant Favorite Film. The violence, male bravado, scope, and that shoot-out on the stairs. It’s a stellar cops-and-gangsters fantasy for… teenage boys. I’m wiser now, and the red-blood love has waned. This is a sloppy-ass film riddled with dubious continuity errors -– moving corpses, that wondering elevator in the assassination scene, a terrible voice dub throughout, and logic tossed aside in a courtroom finale. Too many scenes make me cringe. 

Was De Palma so in love with his own (admittedly great) style, he forgot the importance of details? Hell if I know. Costner is too fantastic to care. B+

“Squad” whiffs fake as “Untouchables” feels immersed in Chicago lore. You can smell the wet paint. I read Ellroy. Call me biased. Josh Brolin is WWII Army Special Forces vet John O’Mara, now a cop assigned to stop New York-bred Cohen (Sean Penn) from becoming the West Coast Capone.

O’Mara is very Ness to the point I believe writer Will Beall watched “Untouchables” on repeat. Lines are lifted whole. O’Mara also has his three heroes: Robert Patrick as wise old cop, Ryan Gosling as hothead cop, and Giovanni Ribisi as nerd cop. Toss in retro-progression with Anthony Mackie as a black patrolman and Michael Pena as a Hispanic flatfoot named Navidad. (Cringe.) 

Plot: O’Mara’s guys shoot the shit out of Cohen’s guys, who do the same back. Penn is comically spittle-tossing evil, his performance falls into hysterics. I laughed my ass off when a ridiculously dickensesque shoeshiner gets whacked. I gather director Ruben Fleischer (“Zombieland”) wasn’t going for giggles among the blood and rape. 

As Ness says, “You aren’t from Chicago.” Do not pretend. C

The Gate (1987)

“The Gate” is one of those late-1980s hell-is-rising horror flicks that, if I saw at age13, I can’t recall. With a then-new diet of HBO’s “Tales from the Crypt,” “The Shining,” “Alien,” and much other horror, I may have laughed myself silly. I did this viewing, age 38. This story is all pre-CGI smoke and rubber-suited demons and zombies chasing after a middle schooler (Stephen Dorff) and his sister and best pal, after a portal to hell is uncovered in their back yard. Naturally. Silly, harmless, with big hair, and big phones that melt to the wall, the real fear here isn’t hell or ghouls, but the reaction Mom n’ Dad will have when they come home and see a smoldering mess of a house. How do you explain that? “The devil made me do it!” Forget the plot, it’s not worth the hassle. Dorff, sweet and innocent, has since carried a career playing vampires and guys who go thump in the night. Love the stop-motion effects. B

Paul (2011) and Spaceballs (1987)

Within a few days of each other, I watched “Spaceballs” and “Paul,” two comedy-spoofs that kick the shins while kissing the feet of George Lucas and Steven Spielberg in their full 1970s “Star Wars” and “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” glory. Hell, this blog title is named after “Close Encounters,” so I and my fellow sci-fi geeks are a happy target, too. So on we go…

Every child of the 1980s has seen “Spaceballs,” Mel Brooks’ spoof of “Star Wars” with rips at “Star Trek,” “Planet of the Apes” and “Alien” tossed in as extras. I knew this film before I knew several of the targets, being 13 in 1987. But space battles are not what Brooks is satirizing here. Rather, he targets the crass commercialization of those films, especially Lucas’ still-insatiable thirst for dollars: The way selling childish Ewok action figures became more important than crafting a nuanced child-like imaginative finale to the hallmark trilogy of Generation X’s youth. “Spaceballs” even stops midpoint to hawk its own release on VHS, a wiser joke now with present-day instant downloads and DVD releases within 8 weeks of a theatrical run.

The plot is “Star Wars” simple: A space cowboy named Lonestar (Bill Pullman) must rescue a princess (Daphne Zuniga) from the evil Dark Helmet (Rick Moranis, stealing the film even with his face covered most of the time). Brooks plays two parts: A “Wizard of Oz”-like lizard alien named Yogurt, spoofing Yoda, and a clueless president, modeled after, dare I say, Ronald Reagan. But it’s not a laugh riot. With none of Gene Wilder’s sharp gags and line delivery from “Producers,” Brooks’ comedy flounders far more than it soars.

Brooks relies on Jewish jokes, and one penis gag after another. Those get old fast. Much of the time, “Spaceballs” just sits there, almost proudly being dull as the heroes really are an unmemorable bunch of slouches. If that joke is on purpose, it back fires. Or one wonders if Brooks’ is just coasting. My theory: He doesn’t love “Star Wars” enough to really tear into it, and have giddy dirty fun as he did in “Blazing Saddles” or “Young Frankenstein.”

Brooks might enjoy “Paul,” with its dick and smoking pot jokes and the “I’m not gay” gay humor that play throughout. Realized in spring 2011, “Paul” plays along similar lines of “Spaceballs,” but stays on Earth with a classic two pals in a road chase plot. It’s more interesting, and has better lead actors. Even better: Some big sci-fi stars pop by spoofing our image of them. And we have Jason Bateman finally (finally!) playing a bad-ass fed prick, with a black suit and a gun. He’s no pocket protector nerd here. He rocks the part.

Our focus is on two Brit sci-fi nerds (Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, who previously teamed in “Shaun of the Dead” and “Hot Fuzz”) who are in the States for Comic Con at San Diego, and then a road-trip in an RV to see Area 51, the famed Black Mailbox and all the other alien invasion hot spots dotted along America. Running from a couple red necks ala “Deliverance,” our heroes see a car crash on the desert highway. The driver: A little green alien. Just like in all the History Channel specials, big raisin head, big black eyes, wee frail body. But this guy sports the demeanor of Seth Green, the actor who made me hate “Green Hornet,” but like such fare as “Superbad.” Speaking of that, Greg Mottola, the guy who directed “Superbad,” is in charge here.

This is a love letter to all films sci-fi, and other American hits: “E.T.,” “Star Wars,” “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” “Blues Brothers,” “Thelma & Louise,” the list goes on. But there’s also a tweak of all those films, as our green guy here dismisses “E.T.” hi-jinks, and smokes a joint with his road trip buddies. There are plenty of great jokes here, but some of the film – including a bit with a Christian fanatic (Kristin Wiig) – drag. At 90 minutes, “Paul” might have been great, at more than 110 minutes, and with an ugly punch of graphic blood, this alien sticks around longer than it should. Closing on a high note: Bateman’s character sarcastically rips into his minions, each a sci-fi fanatic. “You’re a grown man, right?,” he mocks them, and us in the audience. Ouch. But clever.

“Spaceballs”: C+ “Paul”: B

Withnail & I (1986)

“Withnail & I” is near-perfect British art house cinema, best watched with a bottle of wine. This dark-as-night autobiographical farce from director Bruce Robinson is vulgar-funny from the start as two unemployed, starving London actors – Withnail (Richard E. Grant) and “I” (Paul McGann) – grow tired of living in their house of squalor. They bum the key to a countryside cottage owned by Withnail’s gay uncle (Richard Griffiths), and head out for R&R. If only. In a film full of great lines, the best is “We’ve gone on holiday by mistake!” The cottage is in ruins, there is neither food nor firewood, and the locals do not abide fools, and these actors are fools. Uncle Monty soon appears with food and wine in hand, and his eyes set on “I.” This is how you do a city-country farce, bare-knuckle satire all around with human follies roasted on a spit. The love–hate “bromance” between the leads is priceless; the ending sad. Griffiths (who now plays Harry Potter’s uncle) nearly steals the film from the brilliant Grant. Second best line: “We want the finest wines available to humanity, we want them here and we want them now!” A-men! A