Capone stars Tom Hardy in a biopic about Al Capone, the notorious gangster who amassed a staggering fortune in racketeering during Prohibition. That cemented him as a formidable crime boss, a reputation that reverberates even today.
But in the latter half of his life, Al Capone -- once synonymous with power -- is reduced to a shell of his former self. After serving a decade in prison for tax evasion, the once larger-than-life gangster becomes afflicted with dementia and neurosyphilis, and is plagued by the ghosts of his past.
The premise alone is brilliant. Writer-director Josh Trank should be commended for assuming the daring responsibility of assigning a certain humanity to an individual looked up on as a god. This is a rise-and-fall story -- the likes of which most filmmakers would be afraid to tackle.
The main issue, however, is the absence of Capone's rise. The movie works on the assumption that the audience has a preexisting knowledge of Al Capone. In this way the character has no arc, and worse, none of the beats feel earned, and the impact is lost. Imagine if the last half hour of Martin Scorsese's recent epic The Irishman was isolated and prolonged to feature length. The result would feel manipulative and disingenuous.
Everything that the viewer does learn about the ill-fated legend is explicitly told to the audience, either in the opening and closing titles, or through exhaustingly-expository dialogue. The dementia-ridden former-criminal is haunted by hallucinations of the people in his life that he has wronged. These apparitions include Johnny Torrio (played by Matt Dillon) and a boy carrying a gaudy balloon. It's not until well into the second act that we learn who Dillon is meant to be playing, and the reveal is wholly auditory as Johnny explains to Capone (or rather the audience) how he had skimmed a little off the top and in turn met a grisly fate at the hands of the Tom Hardy character.
Of course, we never see this scene play out, nor is the relationship between the two characters even remotely fleshed out. The boy, who the viewer can guess early on is Capone's son Tony, wanders in and out of the hallucinations holding his golden balloon. The audience is never questioning the sanity of the protagonist; the dream sequences are in no way grounded and are without fail interrupted with Hardy gutturally moaning as he squirms around on the floor, leaving no room for interpretation.
The notion of Capone wandering through different memories as his mind deteriorates theoretically could work, but who the characters are is cloudy and the cinematography sticks to stationary medium shots devoid of personality -- a far cry from the Lynch films director of photography Peter Deming has worked on in the past. The aesthetic mirrors John Travolta's reviled works The Fanatic and Gotti. The character is treated with as much nuance as a tommy gun to the face. Tom Hardy gets lost in the character, but his unintelligible speech and grotesque actions (he defecates in not one, but two scenes) create a performance that is nothing short of laughable. There is an overabundance of Oscar-baity films each year, but Trank's latest bizarrely seems to be catered to the Razzies.
But in the latter half of his life, Al Capone -- once synonymous with power -- is reduced to a shell of his former self. After serving a decade in prison for tax evasion, the once larger-than-life gangster becomes afflicted with dementia and neurosyphilis, and is plagued by the ghosts of his past.
The premise alone is brilliant. Writer-director Josh Trank should be commended for assuming the daring responsibility of assigning a certain humanity to an individual looked up on as a god. This is a rise-and-fall story -- the likes of which most filmmakers would be afraid to tackle.
The main issue, however, is the absence of Capone's rise. The movie works on the assumption that the audience has a preexisting knowledge of Al Capone. In this way the character has no arc, and worse, none of the beats feel earned, and the impact is lost. Imagine if the last half hour of Martin Scorsese's recent epic The Irishman was isolated and prolonged to feature length. The result would feel manipulative and disingenuous.
Everything that the viewer does learn about the ill-fated legend is explicitly told to the audience, either in the opening and closing titles, or through exhaustingly-expository dialogue. The dementia-ridden former-criminal is haunted by hallucinations of the people in his life that he has wronged. These apparitions include Johnny Torrio (played by Matt Dillon) and a boy carrying a gaudy balloon. It's not until well into the second act that we learn who Dillon is meant to be playing, and the reveal is wholly auditory as Johnny explains to Capone (or rather the audience) how he had skimmed a little off the top and in turn met a grisly fate at the hands of the Tom Hardy character.
Of course, we never see this scene play out, nor is the relationship between the two characters even remotely fleshed out. The boy, who the viewer can guess early on is Capone's son Tony, wanders in and out of the hallucinations holding his golden balloon. The audience is never questioning the sanity of the protagonist; the dream sequences are in no way grounded and are without fail interrupted with Hardy gutturally moaning as he squirms around on the floor, leaving no room for interpretation.
The notion of Capone wandering through different memories as his mind deteriorates theoretically could work, but who the characters are is cloudy and the cinematography sticks to stationary medium shots devoid of personality -- a far cry from the Lynch films director of photography Peter Deming has worked on in the past. The aesthetic mirrors John Travolta's reviled works The Fanatic and Gotti. The character is treated with as much nuance as a tommy gun to the face. Tom Hardy gets lost in the character, but his unintelligible speech and grotesque actions (he defecates in not one, but two scenes) create a performance that is nothing short of laughable. There is an overabundance of Oscar-baity films each year, but Trank's latest bizarrely seems to be catered to the Razzies.