Capone (2020)

A mentally diseased Al Capone (played by Tom Hardy) starts to relive his past in regret, as his diagnosed Neurosyphilis takes hold; all the while being spied on by the FBI on his Florida mansion estate.

Josh Trank’s Capone is a clear passion project, examining the final years of Al Capone’s life in the most visionary and creepy of ways; turning Capone into probably the first “gangster-horror” movie in recent memory. Capone treats Al Capone’s illness as an avalanche of impacting but violently disturbed ghosts, haunting his mansion and his mind as he rotted and decayed in his final moments; taking his family down with him. Al Capone is displayed here by Trank and Hardy, as the lynch pin of all his friends and family, and the reality sets in that when Al Capone crumbles, everybody else does too. Capone sells home the pain Al Capone’s illness put his family threw, and ultimately how his crimes; that got him his empire, was the end of it all from the beginning. The film doesn’t back away from the experience one has and witnesses going through dementia or treating someone with dementia. Ignoring Mafia film genre restraints, Capone practically displays Al’s bed defecating, sudden urination and irritable bole syndrome; leading to immense flatulence in front of an FBI investigator. Capone welcomes the silly moments (including a vegetable cigar) to tell the full story, even at the risk of a classic over the top Tom Hardy performance; that in the end accurately sells the point home of Al’s struggle. Al Capone, the most feared gangster of his time, soon comes to fear his own crew and reverts back to childhood films to regain some much-needed comfort in his sickness. Remembering himself as a boy, all the while cursing everyone around him, including his wife. Capone expresses that it possibly took an illness to force humanity within Al; even if it created hatred towards his family in return. One of the biggest points the film makes, is the contrast between the disgustingly ugly paranoid outrageous slog of Al’s last days, and the beautiful Floridian landscape that held it all. As to the interesting sense that as Al Capone retired to sitting in a chair and spiting all over himself, came he’s vulnerability, and in that vulnerability came the FBI; like the Mafia Al once orchestrated, long ago.

Trank uses expert directing patience, carefully crafting this unsettling character study without over doing the “gangster” elements, that most Mafia pictures can’t avoid. Though this version of Al Capone isn’t in his right mind, Trank doesn’t shy away from close ups of Al Capone’s bloodshot eyes and various scars, as Al Capone stews in his real assumptions and derangements. Many of Trank’s signature darkness and grim special effects is sprinkled plenty throughout the film; akin to Chronicle (2011) and Fantastic Four (2015), giving the film a much further uniqueness amongst its genre, apart from Tom Hardy’s committed performance.

Tom Hardy does extremely fun yet focused work as Al Capone. Going from cartoonish to villainous to meek and mild. With a gurglingly, crunchy voice, immense prosthetics, cigar glued to the lips, bloodshot contacts and a fake receding hairline; at first seems absolutely silly with a rage filled performance, and a flatulence scene of fake fart noises; but as scenes progress, Tom Hardy captures that grim portrayal of a person’s dark and sorry soul, trapped in a body ready to explode with remorse and anguish. Though Tom Hardy isn’t the only one who shines in this mild epic - Linda Cardellini does her best work since Freak and Geeks (1999), playing Al Capone’s wife Mae; powerfully embodying a woman at the end of her rope, haggardly displaying absolute pain, stress, anger and worry, throughout the whole picture through her face alone.

Once Capone comes to a close, you more and more realize that there’s no going back. Knowing Al Capone had it coming to him in the first place, there’s a slight irony to it all; but eventually coming to the point that ‘what comes up, must come down’ in the most fascinating way possible for Al Capone. 8/10.

• Maurice Jones