Goofs for
The Untouchables (1987) More at IMDbPro »

• 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 that appears throughout the movie did not exist in 1929-30. The 4 stars on the flag represent Fort Dearborn, The Chicago Fire, The Columbian Exposition of 1893, and World's Fair of 1933, which hadn't happened yet.
  
  
• Continuity: At his house, Malone's shirt alternates between being buttoned and being unbuttoned 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 a scene set in 1930, when Elliot Ness is listening to "Amos n Andy" on the radio, you can hear a studio audience. "Amos n Andy" didn't 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: When the knife-man is sneaking into Malone's apartment, a camera and operator are reflected in the window.
  
  
• 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. 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: Wallace and his prisoner enter an elevator with one set of doors. It would need 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 smoking filtered cigarettes.
  
  
• Anachronisms: The maple leaf has been a recognized symbol of Canada since the 1850s. However, the maple leaf on the liquor crates during the raid is the stylized 10-point leaf designed for the modern-day Canadian flag, which first appeared in 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: Ness stores his news clippings in a folder with a Treasury Department seal that was adopted in the 1960s. In 1929-30, the seal's inscription was in Latin.
  
  
• Continuity: When Oscar runs through the leaking barrel on the bridge, his clothes are completely dry afterward.
  
  
• Continuity: When Ness meets Malone in his apartment, Malone's collar button is alternately buttoned/unbuttoned between shots.
  
  
• Boom mic visible: When Ness goes to Malone's apartment for the first time, Malone moves towards a bookcase. The boom mic 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.
  
  
• Continuity: Ness's first bust 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. After a brief photo from the cameraman, the packaging straw disappears.
  
  
• 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 in 1937, holds up the Crusader Cop headline in 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; when Malone tosses it to him, and 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.
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): At the very end, before the credits roll, an extra trips and almost falls 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 goes to look into Malone's house, he climbs onto a dumpster to reach the very high first-floor window. However, from his perspective, we move from looking in one window to another, then a third across the side of the building. This is would be impossible without stilts; 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: Frank Nitti falls 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 in the car, as they walk toward the car from behind.
  
  
• Anachronisms: Capone's accountant's glasses have a flat reflection - they're non-corrective. Why would someone in the 1930s wear glasses for fashion's sake?
  
  
• Factual errors: In one of the closing scenes of the movie, Eliiot Ness kills Frank Nitti. The real Frank Nitti actually committed suicide in 1943.
  
  
• Anachronisms: Towards the end when Capone's thug is holding the book keeper at gun point, the 1911-type pistol he is holding has an external extractor right behind the ejection port. The 1911 originally had an internal extractor, whereas the external extractor is a modern invention recently added to the 1911-style pistols.
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: 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, however, there's no evidence that the court DID accept the guilty plea.
  
  
• Factual errors: In the movie Ness is portrayed as married with children. In real life, Ness was a young bachelor living with his parents when he was hired as a prohibition agent and used political/family connections to get his Chicago assignment.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: If the bag the girl was holding at the beginning of the movie had really contained a bomb big enough to blow up a restaurant, the girl would not have been able to hold it at arm's length.
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): The judge presiding over Capone's trial orders that the jury be switched with the jury in a divorce case being tried in another courtroom. Capone is on trial for federal tax evasion, while divorces are state cases, so there could not have been a divorce trial taking place in the same courthouse as Capone's trial.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: At the rendezvous at the Canadian border, Ness shoots a criminal at the cabin. As Ness views the body you can see the criminal breathing.
  
  
• Continuity: Ness hugs the bloodsoaked Malone as he is dying. When he goes straight from Malone's flat to the station to arrest the book keeper there isn't any blood on him.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: Capone's accountant's glasses have a flat reflection - they're non-corrective.
  
  
• Continuity: In the middle of the film Ness' wife gives birth to a son. At what point in the movie does she appear pregnant?
  
  
• Factual errors: The name "George Stone" does not translate to "Guiseppe Petri" in Italian. The Petri part - "Stone" - is correct, however "George" in Italian is "Giorgio". Guiseppe is actually "Joeseph".
  
  

• Crew or equipment visible: SPOILER: When Frank Nitti kills Malone in the alley, if you look closely you can see raised areas on Malone's vest. They're the blood packets exploding.
  
  

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