Review: Capone

The final chapter in the life of gangster Al Capone (Tom Hardy), now gravely ill and erratic. Linda Cardellini plays Capone’s wife, Kyle MacLachlan is his doctor, Noel Fisher plays Capone’s loyal son, and Matt Dillon is an old friend/criminal associate come to help out in Capone’s final days.

 

Once-promising writer-director John Trank continues his career descent by directing Tom Hardy to his hammiest and worst performance to date in this useless, grotesque biopic from 2020. After the notorious flop of “The Fantastic Four” and now this ghastly bit of tedium, I’m not sure how poor Mr. Trank (whose super-powered “Chronicle” was one of the best films of its year) recovers. The idea of covering a less well travelled portion of Capone’s life isn’t an inherently bad one. However, in Trank and Hardy’s hands it’s about 100 minutes of Al Capone gurgling, crapping the bed, squinting, and rolling his eyes. It’s not an interesting or enjoyable experience, and Hardy’s unsubtle performance is as convincing as the dreadful makeup job done on him. Hardy looks more like Harvey Weinstein with pink-eye, which is awfully uncomfortable to endure. Adopting a fake raspy mobster voice, he also sounds enough like Louie the Fly from the Mortein ads so as to be laughable. Linda Cardellini is beautiful and capable as always, and Matt Dillon is solid as usual. The best performance probably comes from “Shameless” co-star Noel Fisher, whom you can’t help feeling sorry for having to endure Hardy’s overacting up close. Hell, even Kyle MacLachlan is decent for a change. No one is able to make up for the mess that Trank and Hardy are making here. It’s that bad.

 

Is this some kind of bad joke? Either way it’s certainly a bad film, and an embarrassing one. A filmmaker out of his depth and an actor seemingly out of his mind combine to create a self-indulgent, borderline unwatchable mess based on potentially interesting subject matter. Wretched.

 

Rating: D

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