Was Jim Malone corrupt?

Yeah, that's something I thought about the first time I saw the film. Possibly, he could have taken them from a bust, rather than having bought them straight from a gangster. But that would still make him kind of a hypocrite, because he's using his police connections to get something that's illegal for everyone else.

Actually, that issue kind of sums up the whole problem I have with cheering on prohibition agents. Throughout society, there seemed to be this shared understanding that prohibition was turning out to be a bad idea, and that there was really nothing wrong with having a few drinks, yet we're supposed to regard these G-Men as heroes for enforcing a bad law.

In context of this movie Malone pouring himself whiskey and Wallace sipping out of the bullet hole of a barrel shows them as guncrazy honchos, willing to kick some Italian ass. They don't obey the law they try to uphold. It's all good humor for them. On the other hand, had the tone of this movie been less pophollywood, it'd be totally appropriate for these characters to indulge in whiskey drinking.

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dance godammit

The fact that Capone had people killed for refusing to participate in the liquor business made him and his people/connections targets for and was the Untouchables' real motivation. Frankly, I don't really care what people want to put in their own body, as long as they don't force anyone else to do so, and the only time I care about broken laws is when they result in actual harm/damage being done, when they don't I say let bygones be bygones.

It is interesting to note that everyone who is seen drinking on camera is killed at some point in the film.

It wasn't illegal to own or drink liquer it was just illeagal to transport or sell it.

The whole concept of the film - battling prohibition - is just ripe for absurd moral hypocrisy - check Costner's final line in the film.

The film doesn't miss a chance to really illustrate how ridiculous the whole battle is - watch Charles Martin Smith grabbing a shwank of whiskey from the truck, Malone pouring himself a drink, etc. The film has to set apart the "true" villains in the film by showing a little girl getting blown up at the beginning of the film - talk about stacking the deck!

Sometimes "The Untouchables" is maddeningly obtuse - its sort of carefree attitude on the whole morality of prohibition and Ness's fight is almost parenthetical - i.e. (yeah, we know all this is *beep* but he killed a girl with a bomb! So he's the real bad guy - get it?)

Please nest your IMDB page, and respond to the correct person -

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