Infamous mobster Al Capone has been depicted many times in film history. There’s a natural attraction to playing such a larger than life figure. Great actors like Jason Robards, Ben Gazzara and Robert De Niro have brought the crime boss to life. In the grand tradition of these actors, Tom Hardy has decided to take a stab at it in Capone. However, instead of depicting the legendary criminal during his height of power and wealth, we see Al in the final stages of his life. Long after his strong hold over prohibition era Chicago and eventual arrest for tax evasion.
Set in 1947, Alphonse Capone is spending his remaining days slowly dying from neurosyphilis in Palm Island, Florida. His wife Mae (Linda Cardellini) is trying to make him as comfortable as possible while he slips into oblivion. All while the Capone estate is shadowed by former mob associates and FBI agents alike trying to find out the location of Alphonse’s supposedly hidden $10 million fortune. Thus, writer/director/editor Josh Trank seeks to make a film about reflection. Where a man who committed multiple heinous crimes is left in a dilapidated state to ponder how his life turned out and if his ends truly justified the means as both the people around him and life itself are closing in on him.
One can see the attraction an actor like Tom Hardy would have to playing a role like Capone. Known for gradios characters like Bane in The Dark Knight trilogy and the titular apocalypse survivor in Mad Max: Fury Road, Hardy loves to truly relish in roles that feel beyond humanity. Luckily for him, Capone turns an already odd human into something more reminiscent of a horror movie ghoul. The design for Hardy’s makeup turns him into a pale scaly creature, like a big mouth bass melded with The Creature from the Black Lagoon. With eyes about as black as a shark. His famous scars on his left cheek even resemble large gills. It’s not necessarily bad make up in that the fit Hardy truly transforms into a sickly facade visually. Still, it’s so overblown that there’s little humanity left in Al’s appearance. Even if he was a real life monster, he still was a human one. It’s a physical transformation that seems to exaggerate a man who’s already slipping away from his human side and gives Hardy the inspiration to play every scene as big as possible.
Tom Hardy as Capone has the vocal range and facial articulation of a Dick Tracy villain, which he commits to fully embodying. No one can really accuse him of phoning in this performance. The scratchy voice and bloated features show Hardy disappearing into a monster, but it’s not a choice that feels like it has a base to stand on. Capone already acts out in quick violent outbursts like a monster, screaming at family members and shooting alligators on a whim. Sometimes Hardy’s athectations feel like a genuinely lost soul struck by dementia. Other times, he’s channeling a parody of a caricature of a mobster from a Looney Tunes cartoon. Even after Capone‘s second stroke, Hardy chomps on scenery about as hard as he does the cigar props hanging out the side of his mouth. This can be a bit of fun on occasion, but becomes old hat rather quickly as Tom Hardy lacks a path to go down. Even as we’re supposed to see the last threads of Al’s soul leave him, Hardy doesn’t give him much of one to start out with. Yet, none of it rises to operatic intriguing heights that’s mildly watchable in the vein of Hardy’s performances in other bad movies like Venom. It’s none of the engaging character building without even the fun gonzo menace.
Then again, Josh Trank doesn’t really seem that interested in the humanity of Capone. In between Al’s fits of dementia fueled rage, Trank flips both tone and genre on a dime. Brief stroke fueled spooky dream sequences evoke Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining. Shady conversations between Al’s doctor (Kyle MacLachlan) and an FBI agent (Jack Lowden) out to find the missing fortune mimic L.A. Confidential. An awkward interrogation punctuated by Alphonso defecating himself loudly seems ripped from sketch comedy, not helped by Hardy acting against Chappelle Show co-creator Neal Brennan. There’s not real cohesive vision to hold up what our reality is supposed to be here. The odder stretches don’t even feel that visually captivating. It’s all imitation from Trank. Just odd diversions that don’t give us much perspective on Capone‘s degradation or how the outside world operates. Even when we occasionally shift toward the perspective of characters like Mae or Johnny (Matt Dillon), we never know how far off Alphonse’s visions of dementia really are from the truth thus robbing this exercise in watching a man deflate of purpose. Which is an especially disappointing waste of Linda Cardellini, an already undervalued actress trying her best to convey the exhaustion and sadness over her husband’s sinking mentality.
Josh Trank ends up making a farce out of Capone, never sticking to a single tone or consistent energy in relation to Al’s degradation or how close the world around him is to caving in around him. Even the thread of the FBI searching for his hidden fortune feels so tossed off to put any kind of stakes into this meandering story. One thematic thread thrown about is the conceit of “courage” and “cowardice.” Capone directly compares himself to Bert Lahr’s Cowardly Lion from The Wizard of Oz and many around him bring up what real courage and cowardice mean within the context of the world of gangsters. What does this “courage” actually stand for or amount to? Very little in the grand scheme of things. Al has no control over his bravery, but the few glimpses we get of whatever his cowardice meant isn’t that intriguing. The purpose of this seems to be an intentional commentary on the limited longevity of a life of crime and how pathetic Al’s final years are as a result. Still, it’s a point that’s pretty shallow as Trank wallows in repeatedly, like a low tide Florida swamp filled with alligators.
Whether or not Capone is accurate to the circumstances of the gangster’s actual final years isn’t something I’m as knowledgeable about beyond the broad strokes. The bigger problem is that Trank’s film doesn’t really have much of a literal or emotional reality to keep us hooked into this man’s descent. One who had no idea of the mobster’s infamous actions would get very little about his impact and probably question what the big deal is about him. Given this is Josh Trank’s return to filmmaking after the disastrous production that was 2015’s Fantastic Four, it seems like he wants to hop back in guns ablazing to experiment as much as he can. Thus, we get what feels like an expensive student film. The weird affectations of Hardy and the decent work of his fellow cast mates only amount to so much in this meandering internal piece of a infamous figure in American history slowly dying. Trank even shows some panache for individual scenes in terms of mood & atmosphere. Yet, this flimsy exercise in misery wallowing will do little to make one contemplate or be even mildly entertained. Not even worth picking up your gold plated tommy gun for, honestly.
Rating: 1.5 out of 5 Cigar Substituting Carrots
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