Movie Review: Capone

Capone ** ½ / *****

Directed by: Josh Trank.

Written by Josh Trank.

Starring: Tom Hardy (Fonse - Al Capone), Linda Cardellini (Mae), Matt Dillon (Johnny), Al Sapienza (Ralphie), Kathrine Narducci (Rosie), Noel Fisher (Junior), Gino Cafarelli (Gino), Mason Guccione (Tony),  Jack Lowden (Crawford), Kyle MacLachlan (Doctor Karlock), Rose Bianco (Nanna), Manny Fajardo (Zambini), Christopher Bianculli (Young Tony), Edgar Arreola (Rodrigo), Jhemma Ziegler (Betty). 

 

I have to give Josh Trank and Tom Hardy some credit here – they undoubtedly made the precise movie they wanted to make in Capone. And, again, credit where due, it is completely unlike any other movie about Al Capone, and really about any mob figure, either real or fictional. They have succeeded in making a film that completely and totally drains any romanticism out of being in the mob, but do so by basically not showing Capone’s mob years at all. No, this film is entirely about the last year of Capone’s life – released from prison, suffering from syphilis induced mental problems, unable to control his bowel movements, and living out his life in relative luxury in a Florida mansion – although one that he, and his family, know they really cannot afford. He has nothing left, his legacy is destroyed, and he is a hollow, empty man just waiting to die.

 

So, bravo, I guess for Trank – coming back after his disastrous stint behind the camera for the would-be blockbuster Fantastic Four (2015). He got Fantastic Four because he did a remarkable job directing something that felt like a blockbuster on the cheap – Chronicle – and Fantastic Four was supposed to be his inroads into making more and more blockbusters – a Star Wars, Jurassic Park, etc. And it all ended. He was taken off of Fantastic Four, had no final cut, and the stories that came out about his shoot doomed his future prospects. He became the blockbuster director that never was. In the long run perhaps this will be good for Trank’s career – if not his bank account – because if Capone shows anything, it’s a director completely committed to his vision, which isn’t something blockbusters usually encourage or allow.

 

But what exactly is that vision? You kind of get everything you need to get from Capone from the opening sequence – where Hardy’s Capone stalks around his mansion, seemingly paranoid that someone is there, until you realize he’s just playing hide and seek with the kids. He is a lion in winter, a once powerful man, reduced to this. From there, we get a lot of scenes of people telling him his legacy is over, a lot of questioning about a supposed $10 million he hid before prison, which even he doesn’t know where it is. He is questioned by the Feds – but lets his lawyer do all the talking, his statement clear enough when he shits his pants in front of them. There is one last impotent flurry of violence near the end of the film, but that’s all it is.

 

In Hardy, Trank found the right collaborator. Hardy, like Trank, is nothing if not fully committed – and this certainly continues his streak of performances where he tries to be as unintelligible as possible in his ever line reading. There is more than a little of Brando in Hardy’s performance – both for good and for ill, mixing Brando’s early period commitment, with his later period of not giving a shit – and I know that doesn’t sound like its possible, but somehow it is. Hardy is, of course, a brilliant actor – but like Nicolas Cage, he doesn’t always seem to know when or how to modulate. His performance here is precisely what he wants it to be – whatever that is.

 

What Capone ultimately shows is why you usually do not make biopics about people in this stage of life. The film doesn’t care about anything that made Capone famous, just wants to show you the pathetic shell he was at the end. In that, it undeniably succeeds. Now whether you want to see it or not, is another story.