Next up on the much-delayed Letterboxd Challenge list: A previously unseen, theatrically released film adapted from a television series.

So obviously this is an older movie (from 1987); I’ve never seen it, because it’s about gang stuff, which is one of my least favorite subjects. And it’s never really seemed to have the critical cachet of like The Godfather or Scorsese’s stuff.

But so as it started and the credits spooled out, my eyebrows rose, because it’s really just loaded with talent: David Mamet on the script, Ennio Morricone with the music, Brian De Palma behind the camera, and Connery, Costner, De Niro, and Andy Garcia in front of it.

And as it starts out, it seems promising. Morricone’s music is memorable (if on the obtrusive side; it’s not quite Bernstein and On the Waterfront, but same vibes) and De Palma’s camerawork is interesting.

But… it quickly becomes clear that the story is going down the most banal and obvious paths imaginable, and the characters are basically pulling their identities from the stock character basket. Oh look, you’re the idealistic reformer who doesn’t know how things work in the real world, and he’s the old beat cop who’s come to an accommodation with a corrupt system but now you’re reminding him of the ideals he used to have. And there’s the bright young talented kid fresh out of school, he’ll pair up nicely with the nerd who’s excited about boring accounting stuff and who’s going to get a comedic action scene later.

(The movie also continues the tradition of casting Connery as literally any European ethnicity except Scottish, as here he’s allegedly supposed to be an Irish cop, which is particularly jarring when there’s an actual Irish cop guy in the same scene with him.)

Beyond that, the plot is nonsense. Like, there’s an effectively creepy scene where an assassin is stalking Connery, and De Palma films it like a slasher horror picture, all first person perspective and pans across windows to see Connery moving from room to room. But the actual events make no sense — as Connery exclaims, the assassin brought a knife to a gun fight, and the way that Connery is eventually killed seems too elaborate to be the real plan.

Similarly, there’s a scene “on the Canada border,” which seems to barely acknowledge that Chicago isn’t anywhere near Canada, and never specifies where we are (not Detroit, certainly; is it supposed to be like in Montana somewhere?).

But the most absurd scene is the courtroom scene at the end, which is full of just piles and piles of procedural nonsense, the absolute capstone of which is Capone’s lawyer pleading guilty against Capone’s wishes and that being the dispositive event where everyone breaks out cheering because they got him and he’s going to jail, even as Capone struggles and fights and argues that he doesn’t want to plead guilty. If this had been how it went in real life, Capone would have won on appeal in about thirty seconds and been back on the street.

The movie is stylish, it’s visually and musically interesting. It’s even got some good acting in it (though not from Costner, who is incredibly wooden). But it’s so trite and silly that it still ends up not quite reaching the heights of mediocrity.