Brian de Palma's brilliant The Untouchables had a great wealth of talent both in front of and behind the camera; in front were Kevin Costner, Sean Connery (in Oscar-winning form) and Robert de Niro; behind, no lesser screenwriter than David Mamet and no lesser composer than Ennio Morricone, working with de Palma for the second time, after Casualties of War.  He earned a rare Oscar nomination in the process and his score is so compelling it is not difficult to see why.  While it is sometimes argued that Morricone's Hollywood scores are rarely as creative as some of his Italian ones, I'm not sure that is entirely true, and The Untouchables is certainly a creative piece of music.

If I may begin with a criticism, then that is of the album's arrangement.  Rather foolishly, it opens with the end titles; while this does happen on albums and sometimes works fairly well, here you feel that the whole score in the film has been building up to this moment, and to put it at the start of the album is simply bad album production.  But none of that can detract from just how appealing a piece it is.  Morricone himself reportedly didn't like it - de Palma forced him to write a far more traditional, Hollywood-style sweeping piece than he liked doing, but from my point of view it worked out very well.  Full of heroism and triumph, it quickly became one of the composer's most popular creations, and is still regularly heard in trailers for other movies.

"Al Capone" is a comically old-fashioned piece for the master criminal; while in the film it is perhaps the one aspect of the score that just doesn't quite work (it's a bit too light and cheerful), it's a joy on CD.  "Death Theme" is a gorgeous piece, one of those themes Morricone seems to conjure up at the drop of a hat; indeed, he creates these gorgeous melodies so frequently that people just seem to take them for granted and let them pass by; I suggest savouring them while you can!  He presents an even better one later on in the score in "Ness and his Family", quite exquisitely beautiful.

"Waiting at the Border" introduces some suspense music, which as usual for the composer works extremely well in the film but can be something of an acquired taste away from it.  "The Man with the Matches" is another one, but this time the harmonica brings to mind the composer's classic western scores, which is no bad thing, and it makes for a compelling piece.  "On the Rooftops" is the first real action piece, and it's a great one, perfectly capturing the slightly comic-book nature of the film.  "The Strength of the Righteous" reprises the material later on the album (though in fact was the first piece heard in the film) and is just as good.  The album ends with a protracted suspense piece, "Machine Gun Lullaby", which brilliantly lays typical Morricone angular string writing over a music box lullaby for a great piece of suspense music; but sadly it is no way to end an album!  Grievances about the track order aside, this is a first-rate score from one of the true legends of film music, and deserves to be in everyone's collection.