If you’re a regular reader of The Playlist, there’s a good chance you’ve heard the name Antonios Papantoniou by now. Sound familiar at all? Papantoniou is a fastidious and astute independent filmmaker who also makes incredibly detail-oriented, painstaking studies of camera and shot techniques employed by some of the greatest directors working today. He’s dubbed these video essays his “Shot by Shot” series. We’ve already featured ones he’s done on Spielberg (“Jaws”) and Scorsese (“Cape Fear”).
Before Papantoniou studied either of those films, though, he turned his focus to the incredible and classic union station scene in Brian De Palma’s 1987 hit, “The Untouchables.” OK — brief time out. If for whatever reason you haven’t yet seen the scene in reference, it’s one of the most tense, beautifully choreographed, flat-out awesome shootouts ever to be committed to film. We've added it below, so you can watch it in its entirety without Papantoniou’s notes. But if you haven’t seen it, then...
