The Untouchables 24 pages

This wiki covers The Untouchables (1987), Brian De Palma's Prohibition-era crime film about a Treasury agent who assembles a team of incorruptible men to bring down Al Capone in 1930s Chicago.

Film & Story

The Untouchables (1987) is the hub page. Backbeats (The Untouchables) narrates the film in 40 turns mapped to a modified Yorke five-act structure — every beat footnoted to caption-file line numbers, designed for podcast use or as a quick-reference story map. Cast and Characters (The Untouchables) gives the ensemble overview.

Structure & Graphics

Plot Structure (The Untouchables) applies the Two Approaches framework to the film, locating the midpoint at Wallace's murder in the service elevator and reading the climax as Ness producing his own legitimacy through extralegal violence and a bluff to the judge — placing the film in the worse/sufficient (cynical fable) quadrant, with a partial reading available as pragmatic redemption. The Roof and Chambers Climax (The Untouchables) argues the climax/wind-down boundary by the strict-mission test and supplies the catalog row's evidence base. Structure Graphics (The Untouchables) visualizes the narrative architecture of the film across backbeats — tracking Ness's control as he builds a team under Malone, loses his allies, and wins at the cost of the principles that started the fight.