Robert DeNiro* had not worked with Brian De Palma since Greetings and Hi Mom. That theme for taking forever to make something happen also is something that Ned Tanen knew all about.

He spent years trying to obtain the rights to Eliot Ness’s life story while working as an executive at Universal Pictures. After becoming head of motion picture productions at Paramount Pictures, which owned the film and television rights to Ness’s memoir The Untouchables, he hired Art Linson to begin producing a film adaptation.

Linson didn’t have any interest in remaking the TV series. Instead, he wanted to show the real world Ness and his career in Chicago. He hired playwright David Mamet to write the script, which other than a few changes for the sake of new locations, went unchanged. De Palma wouldn’t take much credit for what he did, telling The New York Times, “Being a writer myself, I don’t like to take credit for things I didn’t do. I didn’t develop this script. David used some of my ideas and he didn’t use some of them. I looked upon it more clinically, as a piece of material that has to be shaped, with certain scenes here or there. But as for the moral dimension, that’s more or less the conception of the script, and I just implemented it with my skills – which are well developed. It’s good to walk in somebody else’s shoes for a while. You get out of your own obsessions; you are in the service of somebody else’s vision, and that’s a great discipline for a director.”

While De Palma’s movie is based on historic events, most of the film is inaccurate. For example, there was no border raid, no shootouts at the train station or courthouse. Ness didn’t even have much to do with Capone’s conviction at the end of everything. Frank Nitti killed himself 12 years after the trial. And Capone ordered his men to not kill or harm Ness or any of his agents. Sure, he tried to bribe them. But he knew that any violence against him would only bring more government interest.

Movies don’t have to be real to be great.

Instead, let’s indulge in the world of this film, where Ness (Kevin Costner) and James Malone (Sean Connery) form their Untouchables with George Stone (Andy Garcia) and Oscar Wallace (Charles Martin Smith) to go up against Capone and his henchmen like the sinister Nitti (Billy Drago, incredible as always). Let’s thrill to De Palma restaging the Odessa Steps scene in Sergei Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin on the stairs of a train station. Let’s watch moments that have transcended just this movie and become part of the film language for everyone.

It really is astounding when you think of the highs and lows of De Palma. For all the attacks he received for his violent films and talk of misogyny, he made movies that have become iconic parts of our mythology.

*De Niro almost didn’t make the film. He was on Broadway at the time and his schedule wasn’t lining up. De Palma then had Bob Hoskins ready for the part. When it. all worked out, he mailed Hoskins a check for £20,000 with a “Thank You” note. Hoskins called the directed to ask him if there were any more films he didn’t want him to be in.