The Crime Thriller That Cemented Kevin Costner as a Star 40 Years Ago Is Still a Massive Streaming Hit

Gangster movies have existed almost as long as cinema itself. During the 1930s, classics like Little Caesar and Angels with Dirty Faces captured audiences’ imaginations by dramatizing the chaos and crime of the Prohibition era. A year before Prohibition ended, Scarface (1932) hit theaters, introducing Paul Muni’s Tony Camonte — a fictional mobster clearly inspired by real-life crime boss Al Capone.

These early crime sagas paved the way for film noir, where moral ambiguity and flawed heroes took center stage. Performances like Humphrey Bogart’s in High Sierra (1941) and Marlon Brando’s brooding turn in On the Waterfront (1954) brought new emotional depth to tales of organized crime. But when modern audiences think of gangster films, a few defining titles dominate the conversation — none more so than Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather (1972) and Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas (1990). Yet, three years before Goodfellas hit theaters, another gem of the genre arrived — and it’s currently experiencing a major resurgence on streaming platforms.

The True Story Behind The Untouchables

Directed by Brian De Palma, The Untouchables tells the real-life story of federal agent Eliot Ness and his mission to bring down Chicago’s most notorious mob boss, Al Capone. Kevin Costner stars as Ness, joined by Sean Connery as the streetwise veteran cop Jim Malone, Andy Garcia as sharpshooter George Stone, and Charles Martin Smith as the mild-mannered accountant Oscar Wallace.

Frustrated by corruption within the police force, Ness assembles a small team of honest officers — a group the press famously dubbed “The Untouchables.” The film, adapted from Ness’s 1957 memoir co-written with journalist Oscar Fraley, dramatizes their daring pursuit of Capone. Following Wallace’s advice to target Capone through his finances, Ness and his men set out to prove that the mob boss could be taken down not by bullets, but by paperwork.

While based on real events, De Palma’s version leans more toward legend than strict history. In reality, the Untouchables were a large, rotating team of investigators, not the tight four-man crew seen in the film. David Mamet’s screenplay heightens the drama, inventing Connery’s character entirely to serve as a moral guide for Ness. The result is a “fedora Western” — stylish, mythic, and emotionally charged.