Goofs for
The Untouchables (1987)

photos

board

trailer

details

• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: While Eliot Ness, the Untouchables, and 'Al Capone (I)' were real, this story is highly fictionalized and contains much that deviates from that reality.
  
  
• Anachronisms: The Chicago flag appears throughout the movie, but the flag was not in existence in 1929-30. The 4 stars on the flag represent 1) Fort Dearborn, 2) The Chicago fire, 3) The World Columbian Exposition of 1893, and 4) The Century of Progress, World's Fair of 1933. The flag could not have existed then as the event represented by the 4th star had not yet happened.
  
  
• Continuity: At his house, Malone's (un-)buttoned shirt when talking to Ness.
  
  

• Continuity: During the bridge shootout, a barrel of whisky stops leaking but then starts up again.
  
  
• Boom mic visible: During the restaurant scene.
  
  
• Anachronisms: During scene set in 1930 where Elliot Ness is listening to "Amos n Andy" on the radio, a studio audience is heard. "Amos n Andy" did not perform before a studio audience until December, 1936. The broadcast we hear is from 16 November 1952.
  
  
• Continuity: At the Canadian border, Ness, the other three Untouchables and the Captain are standing in a line of five. We then see the captain leave the line after he gives orders. When the camera pulls out, however, we see that the line the five of them were standing in is still intact. Someone on horseback is moving in the back, but unless someone took the captain's place, it cannot be the captain.
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: Camera and operator visible in window's reflection when the knife-man is sneaking into Malone's apartment.
  
  
• Continuity: In the scene on the bridge, the same car's headlights are shot out twice.
  
  
• Factual errors: At the rendezvous at the Canadian border, the Mountie officer is a captain. But the RCMP uses British-style, not American-style, police ranks. He should be an inspector.
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: While the judge at Capone's trial should have allowed the defense to examine and approve the new jurors when the jury was exchanged, the defense objected and was overruled, so this would be a point for appeal.
  
  
• Continuity: The elevator that Wallace and his prisoner get into is the kind with only one set of doors, but it would have to have two openings for Ness to enter it from outside the building.
  
  
• Continuity: One of Capone's men has the accountant hostage. Capone's man is sweating a lot as he counts to three; his sweat vanishes as the bullet enters his mouth.
  
  
• Anachronisms: In several scenes, Ness is seen smoking filtered cigarettes.
  
  
• Anachronisms: The maple leaf (as seen on the crates of Canadian "whisky" during the raid) has been a recognized symbol of Canada since the middle of the 19th century, despite its not having been part of the national flag until the 1960s, but the maple leaf design seen on the liquor crates is the stylized 10-point one for the modern-day Canadian flag which did not come into being until 1965
  
  
• Continuity: The number of matches in the matchbook with Malone's address increases.
  
  
• Anachronisms: At the Canadian border, a white '80s style car can be seen driving by in the background.
  
  
• Anachronisms: The folder Ness stores his news clippings in has a version of the Treasury Department seal that was adopted in the 1960s (the former one had a Latin inscription).
  
  
• Continuity: When Oscar runs through the leaking barrel on the bridge his clothes are completely dry thoughout.
  
  
• Continuity: When Ness meets Malone in his apartment, Malone's collar button is alternately buttoned/unbuttoned between shots.
  
  
• Boom mic visible: In the scene where Ness goes to Malone's apartment for the first time, Malone moves towards a bookcase, and the boom mike is reflected onto the glass front of a police officer's picture on one of the shelves (0:24:40 into the DVD).
  
  
• Continuity: When Ness is dragging Nitti on the court rooftop, he pushes towards the rooftop door. The distance to the door changes continuously.
  
  
• Factual errors: After discovering that his case is a lost cause, Capone's lawyer switches his plea from not guilty to guilty, despite Capone's objection. A court cannot accept a guilty plea over the objection of a defendant.
  
  
• Continuity: The first bust made by Ness that is unsuccessful - he pulls an umbrella out of one of the Canadian boxes. When he first opens the umbrella it has packaging straw on it, then after a brief photo from the cameraman the packaging straw is not longer on the umbrella.
  
  
• Audio/visual unsynchronized: When Ness says the line, "You tell Capone... I'll see him in hell," his teeth are firmly clenched, and his lips are not moving. There is also a clearly audible difference between this "looped" line and the rest of the scene.
  
  
• Anachronisms: Cellophane tape, invented ca. 1937, is seen holding up the Crusader Cop headline ca. 1930.
  
  
• Continuity: When Capone is replying to the interviewers saying, "I'm responding to the will of the people," there is a certain amount of shaving cream on his face. When we next see his face, a moment later, there is more shaving cream than before.
  
  
• Continuity: The "I am very proud of you" note written by Ness's wife is shown in three separate scenes and is a different prop in each.
  
  
• Continuity: In the post office raid, Stone cocks his shotgun twice - first, when Malone tosses it to him, second, just before Malone breaks the door open.
  
  
• Anachronisms: After Ness threatens Capone in the lobby of the Lexington Hotel, as Malone is dragging him to the revolving door, several 1980s vehicles are visible across the street, most prominently a white van.
  
  
• Continuity: At the start of the movie, the amount of shaving foam on Capone's face changes.
  
  
• Factual errors: In the roof top shoot out, when Ness falls off the roof to the ledge, a shot of Drago's pistol shows the slide mechanism is locked back, indicating it is out of ammunition. After Ness takes a shot at him, Drago is running away and tries to shoot back and you hear the hammer click three times. In pistols of the type he was using, with the slide locked back, the trigger and hammer mechanism are disabled.
  
  
• Continuity: Oscar goes down in the elevator a few meters before the corridor turns right and after a flight of stairs. But when Elliot Ness realises something is wrong he runs down these stairs. Police Chief Mike Dorsett goes into his office at the end of the said hallway and looks out of his window which is situated on the line of the corridor and sees the assailant who killed Oscar and the witness. This mistake in essence means that the lift shaft moved 100 yards along the line of the corridor.
  
  
• Factual errors: The Canadian red leaf design embossed on the wooden crates in the initial police raid was first seen in public in 1964 when the new Canadian flag was introduced by Parliament. Prior to this time the official leaf was green.
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): At the very end of the movie before the credits role, an extra can be seen tripping and almost falling as he crosses the street.
  
  
• Errors in geography: The film shows a bridge over a small river in apparently Western high-desert terrain. The bridge has no customs-immigration stations. In fact, there is no river (or water) boundary between the US and Canada between Lake of the Woods, MN and Puget Sound on the Pacific Coast. Bridge boarder crossings in Northern Minnesota and Michigan cross much larger rivers, connect two towns and are in forested areas.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When the knife-man first went to look into Malone's house he climbs onto a dumpster in order to reach the very high first floor window. However, from his perspective, we move from looking in one window to another and another across the whole side of the building. This is impossible without stilts since the dumpster was only positioned under one of the windows.
  
  
• Continuity: During the border shootout, Ness chases a bad guy to the cabin. He then tosses a grenade onto the roof which rolls then falls to the ground. Bad guy sees it - stationary and smoking. Cut to front-of-cabin angle and the grenade is bouncing on ground and explosion happens next to grenade.
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: After Frank Nitti has fallen to his death into the car below, and Eliot Ness says "He's in the car.", in the next shot the camera is moving slowly toward the damaged car and Frank's body. If you look closely you can see the camera crew gradually reflected on the car, as they walk up toward the car from behind.
  
  

• Crew or equipment visible: SPOILER: When Malone is being killed by Frank Nitti in the alley, if you look closely you can see raised areas on Malone's vest that are the blood packets exploding.
  
  

Related Links