FilmSnobReviews

Title: Capone
MPAA Rating: R
Director: Josh Trank
Starring: Tom Hardy, Linda Cardellini, Matt Dillon
Runtime: 1 hr 43 mins

What It Is: Notorious gangster Al Capone (Hardy) has just been released from prison after 10 years. Sadly he’s been released for medical reasons. You see the effects of his syphilis have taken a mental toll on him. Now he’s out of his mind. Paranoid and out of control. Both of his mind and sadly his bowels. His wife Mae (Cardellini) all the while dealing with his violent sways in mood and aforementioned rocky relationship with a toilet.

What We Think: This movie sucks. The whole script is an absolute mess. It’s looking more and more like Chronicle was an anomaly. Trank writes and directs this one and does neither very well. Tom Hardy once against grunts his way through a performance. Where in Mad Max: Fury Road you can get away with that it doesn’t work here. Those aren’t even the only two examples of Hardy doing this sort of thing and it’s a speck in his filmography of grunty/incomprehensible characters. With this it’s almost as if every single frame was smeared in feces in HOW this abomination looks. It’s mostly devoid of anything but unintentional comedy. A lot of the narrative is a muddled mess. Things and entire characters just appear and happen. No real context is provided. It puts too much on the audience to assume and never explains the majority of things. Perhaps it looks good on paper but never really got to the screen in its entire context?

Our Grade: F, Unforgivable in execution and style there’s nothing of importance nor relevance here. An interesting historical figure gets the biopic treatment and honestly, De Niro’s Capone in the Untouchables is a far more interesting figure then Hardy’s here. Skip this. If the film is even on your television just go ahead and throw that out too. It is that bad. Just an utter piece of trash disgustingly delivered and painfully attempted. Just gross.