In early 1987, Kevin Costner was best known as Jake, the cocky gunslinger in “Silverado”, the western by Lawrence Kasdan. This was a compensatory role on the part of the director, who had excluded Costner from “The Big Chill” because his portrayal of the late Alex was not well-liked by test audiences; Basically, the entire cast had done such a good job of building up Alex’s importance that the then-unknown Costner couldn’t live up to the legend. And while it was a nice gesture on Kasdan’s part, “Silverado” didn’t exactly catch fire at the box office during the summer of 1985.

So when Costner landed the plum role of Eliot Ness in Brian De Palma’s 1987 gangster saga “The Untouchables,” Paramount Pictures launched an advertising offensive to sell the handsome 32-year-old actor as a major movie star finally here. Adorned in fine threads from Giorgio Armani and armed with sharp dialogue from David Mamet, Costner was essentially taking batting practice with a corked bat. How could he not rise to full-fledged movie stardom as Ness with De Palma behind the camera, and Sean Connery and Robert De Niro as his foils?

Most people will tell you that Costner delivered as expected, but they will tell you that he could have done better. How so? By bringing to his role the one thing that his co-stars had more that he lacked: experience.

In an interview with GQ in 2024 Related to the release of his still-unfinished Western epic “Horizon: An American Saga,” Costner spoke about the making of “The Untouchables.” While the film is an indisputable classic that grossed $76 million in the United States (enough to finish 6th at the box office in 1987), Costner believes he brought a knife to a shootout.

“‘The Untouchables’ was a really well-written script,” Costner said. “David Mamet had really written a very perfect script, and so I wanted to be a part of it. Brian de Palma directed it, and of course Sean Connery was in it, you know, Robert De Niro, and it was a good script . moment for me to be in this film.” It was a good time, but it wasn’t a good time for Costner. “I actually didn’t think Sean was the kind of guy who would like me,” he said. “I don’t know why, but he did it. He was good to me. And I learned a lot because my eyes were open. I wish I was a better actor when I did ‘The Untouchables’ “, but I was where I was.”

Some critics were not kind to Costner in 1987. Roger Ebert wrote“The script doesn’t give him, and [Costner] doesn’t provide any of the little character twists that could have made Ness an individual. “I disagree with this. Everything we know about Ness’s life after Prohibition (for example, the fact that he became a barely employable drunk) has no purchase in De Palma’s film .The story, in general, has no purchase Do you think Ness led a Canadian border drinking raid with the mounted police and that Mamet’s Ness is a boy scout? that’s it. this gangster movie formula requires Costner to do what the cast and director did if he had been more confident he could have questioned De Palma like he did with other directors, and that would have gone badly. De Palma got it at the right timeand Costner was the right kind of naive. Here, as Sean Connery’s Malone would say, the lesson ends.