Written by Mr. Mouseburger 15th Jun 2005
Following a roof top chase, Frank Nitti has been caught by Ness who, after reading him his mirandas, is leading him towards the stairs.
Nitti is confident that his lawyer can get him off of any charge and chooses to mock Malone (q.v.), the deceased partner of Ness who was killled by Nitti earlier in the film. The line "He died screaming like a stuck Irish pig" is enough to unbalance Ness and the audience is treated to the full range of Costner's acting prowess (which equates to one furrowed brow) before he route marches Nitti off the side of the courthouse roof.
Nitti, in freefall, is flapping wildly trying to slow his descent. He need not have bothered, as the roof of a car stops him quite abruptly.
"Did he sound like that?"
According to the DVD, Andy Garcia was originally intended to play Nitti, until he convinced the producers otherwise. (a good idea, too, as Drago and Garcia work very well in their roles)
More trivia:
- Billy Drago is really "nice" in real life.
- The shot where Nitti is seen being thrown off, there is actually very large crash mat below. No trickery here!
- The close-up shots were done in bluescreen, where "they took quite a lot of shots to get that" because bluescreen was "not too sophisticated at the time."
- Apparently, "the stunt of him going off the roof is for the audience to savour the bad guy getting killed."
- The real life Nitti was not killed by Ness: he took over Capone's empire after Capone was sent to jail.
Just a thought - Revenge for killing Malone and Oscar. (more specifically the former)
Revenge should work too.
I love Ness's quip-
Stone- Where's Nitti?
Ness- He's in the car.
The Untouchables was a great movie, but like most Hollywood films is historically inaccurate. Frank "The Enforcer" Nitty never was thrown off the roof by Elliot Ness. Instead, he commited suicice when then Chicago Outfit wanted him to take the rap for them. He died in 1943. You can look this up on wikipedia.org
Revenge is right but he din't kill oscar.
Major, not minor.
Debatable. He's a thug, really. But then again so was Durant, and he gets to be a Baddy (Major).
Anonymous User Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> The Untouchables was a great movie, but like most
> Hollywood films is historically inaccurate. Frank
> "The Enforcer" Nitty never was thrown off the roof
> by Elliot Ness. Instead, he commited suicice when
> then Chicago Outfit wanted him to take the rap for
> them. He died in 1943. You can look this up on
> wikipedia.org
True but then again, the real-life Untouchables lived up to their name and didn't suffer a single casualty.
And Kooshmeister, I'm pretty sure Nitti is a Baddy (Minor). Durant was a hired thug but he was more like the main villain's partner-in-crime rather than his henchman. Nitti was Capone's henchman.