Capone (dir. by Josh Trank, 2020)

Film director Josh Trank made headlines back in 2015 when he stated that the abysmal Fantastic Four reboot that he had directed was in fact heavily altered and compromised by the studio overlords at 20th Century Fox. After the film tanked, Trank took to the Twittersphere to voice his grievances and shift the blame for the incoherent mess of a superhero movie that had his name stamped all over it.

Due to the inevitable controversy following Fantastic Four’s release, the director took a five-year hiatus before returning with Capone, a smaller-scale passion project for Trank that he wrote, edited and directed. There’s no way Trank can deny his guiding hand’s presence this time, and even though Capone is better than his calamitous comic book creation, this gangster fable is a messy and immature portrayal of the famed mobster’s final days.

Known to most as the infamous Chicago criminal kingpin during the Prohibition era of the United States, Al Capone has become a mythologised figure within modern criminal history. He’s been the subject of numerous books and films so it’s no surprise that Trank tried to focus on a lesser known period of his life to tell his Capone story. Due his failing health caused by Syphilis, Capone was released from prison and made his home in Palm Island, Florida, where he spent the last seven years of his life until his death at the age of 48.

The premise is an interesting one. Focused on the decaying mind and body of a once feared and formidable man, Capone relies on the gangster’s reputation too much, not creating enough sense of his past to build up any sort of sympathy for the character. His past (and far more interesting) life is only signalled by a vague and bloody vision that occurs halfway through the runtime, and a pointless illegitimate son plotline that has no bearing on the rest of the plot. Capone spends most of its time rolling through scenes of a senile and angry man grumbling and groaning behind a chewed-up cigar.

Tom Hardy does his best in a tough central role. He gets to the heart of Capone’s debilitating mental health with a relatively limited script. His raspy tobacco-tainted voice is hard to understand at times, but it suits the character perfectly. Capone won’t get him any Oscars, but it certainly continues to prove the British actor’s variety and range. The makeup for the character is fantastic though. The man’s pale complexion constantly shifting from scene to scene with ugly sores and rashes, and constantly accompanied by bloodshot vampiric eyes.

The various characters surrounding the chief mobster are forgettable and do little but serve as a bouncing board for Capone’s madness. The plot focuses on everyone (from the FBI to his own family) trying to coax the hidden location of a large stash of money out of him. It never materialises, and it ends up just being a weak MacGuffin to allow the story to play out.

Capone never manages to live up to its enticing premise. An aging gangster fighting his demons sounds a like great vehicle for Tom Hardy to show his versatile talent. But Trank’s empty script, and frankly, messy misconception of mental illness destroys any chance to fully realise the potential story. One particular tense scene is quickly undercut by infantile instances of flatulence, which kind of sums up Trank’s hopeful return to filmmaking.