Capone

Summary: The movie centers on the final year before Al Capone's death. He suffers from dementia caused by advanced neurosyphilis.

While his wife, brother and sister in law, son, and old friends try to care for him, his mind wanders back and forth from his current state to haunting memories of his gangster past.

The setting, hair, makeup, costumes are fantastic. The movie takes place in a small universe - Capone's Florida estate. There are scenes outside of his estate, but largely it's focused on Capone and his family trying to care for his ailing health. This is because, in the final year of his life, his entire world IS the estate.

His hallucinations are largely due to dementia and a second stroke suffered during the movie. I think this is where audience members take issue with the movie. Some have criticized the movie as disjointed - but that's because the mind of a person with dementia is disjointed. Likewise, when the name Capone is mentioned, it almost always conjures up the image of Capone in his young years - a tough, shrewd, criminal that loved to indulge in parties, alcohol, and women, and was the genius mastermind behind numerous robberies and schemes.

Instead, what is presented to the audience is a disgusting, weak, demented old man who sh.ts the bed and pisses himself. His eyes are perpetually bloodshot, most of the time he's only capable of grunting or growling a few words, he walks with a doddering stumble, and his skin looks like death warmed over. These are actually symptoms of a person suffering from a neurodegenerative disease. Tom Hardy does an excellent job at portraying Capone in this manner. If you're familiar with caring for a person with dementia or mental decline, you would find his look and behavior eerily realistic. This also makes his hallucination/flashback scenes more realistic - and thus, why they have an element of "horror" to them.

It is also a very slow movie. It's anticlimactic. That is a valid criticism. It was a good watch, but I'll never watch it again. I got the main take away that Al Capone had a miserable few years at the end of his life.

I admired the film more than I enjoyed it, but it kept my interest throughout despite being a bit of slog at times. It's fascinating. The title 'Capone' invokes the expectation that this was a biopic of the famous gangster, but this isn't that at all. This is something very different, and very deliberately so, but due to the title it's going to confuse and disappoint most people (which is why Trank hated that he had to change it from the original title 'Fonzo' for marketing reasons). There's hardly a reference for this kind of film; it's not a traditional narrative in any sense.

What I keep thinking about is how even most gangster films who pretend to de-glamorize criminals and their lifestyle fail; it's the same problem with the "anti-" war movie that still depicts a rousing, exciting adventure next to the misery and the atrocities and thus defeats its own purpose. Rare is the war or gangster film that actually achieves to show the underlying emptiness; the ugly, banal, vulgar and sad reality that ultimately is what most lives of violence lead towards until the haunting memories are the only thing that remains.

The reason for that is obvious: nobody would watch that kind of film because it would be too bleak. But 'Capone' manages that rare feat: it's bleak - but not bleak enough to turn you off, and it's even often entertaining (in terms of its performances, the fantastic score, the beautiful cinematography). But even though this probably wasn't the film's intention, it still manages to be the ultimate deconstruction of the gangster as an "icon" - more so even than Scorsese's 'Irishman' (though it's nowhere near as good a film).

I liked Capone; it's weird (and I guess you shouldn't watch it unless you like profoundly weird little arthouse films) but this is definitely not a badly made film. I hope Trank continues on this path and makes more strange, personal films - although perhaps of the kind that are a little more accessible.

Five stars only because of Tom Hardy's performance. Waste of time.

If you are expecting shootings and Godfather alike you are watching the wrong movie and unfortunately people don't even read what this movie was about hence the low rating.The movie is esoteric.Is about his entrapment in his own mind and about the straggling with his own demons of the past.Hardy once again is just ridiculously amazing.

Can Tom Hardy just finish season 2 of Taboo already? This is a waste of his time and talent.