One might think by now that I would have the common sense to actually listen to people's reviews when going into a film but I suppose there are no limits to what I would do for Tom Hardy. Until now, of course, as this movie was just as atrocious as I have been hearing. Josh Trank's Capone is an absolutely vile and horribly directed biopic about one of America's most infamous gangsters and one that fails to teach its audience anything. Paired with a disgustingly bad performance from its lead and editing that will make your head spin, there is next to nothing even redeemable about this film. I knew what to expect and I knew of the reputation of this filmmaker but I chose to ignore that with high hopes and that turned out to be my gravest mistake. This movie is the biggest waste of $9 that I have spent recently but knowing what I was getting myself into, who's really to blame?
After serving ten years in federal prison for tax evasion, Al Capone (Tom Hardy) returns home to Florida to live out his remaining years while on parole. Chronicling the last year of his life, Capone battles dementia and his past demons while struggling to differentiate between his dark past and current reality. Biopics following the last moments of a person's life always seem to be hit or miss and while this trope in writing is vastly overdone, I appreciate the slightly altered path that writer and director Josh Trank took. To shake things up for his story, there is a sense of horror that flows throughout this film, plaguing its audience like dementia was plaguing Capone. The main problem is that since this terrifying element of the story is the most prominent, it left absolutely no room for the rest of the script. If there was any type of film that deserves a horror infusion into its true elements, it would be the haunting final moments of Capone's life. However, Trank fails to balance this, and I was left wondering what the hell was even happening from the first scene until the last. I had no idea who any of the supporting characters were or why they even mattered and no context was given at all to help tell Capone's story. Instead, the audience is left deciphering through the script that gave them nothing to learn from. Trank could have easily gone the more standard, biopic route, accompanied by flashbacks and callbacks, but this movie was not even informative, which is the basic requirement of this genre of film.
Due to Trank's lackluster writing, I was never able to tell what was real and what was simply in Capone's mind; while that might have been the point due to his battle with dementia, it hurt the story immensely and the aimless direction from Trank also did not help. On top of Capone never really justifying its reason for existence, Trank has to force-feed background knowledge in order to get his point across. He is incredibly blunt with this film's visual language and I just despised how he treats the people who want to learn something about the crime lord. One of the film's recurring motifs is the radio show that Capone listens to in order to stay sane and the show he tunes into is about himself during the Saint Valentine's Day Massacre of 1929, for God's sake. I was consistently repulsed at Trank's depictions of Capone and the violence that he uses throughout this movie was vile. It did not seem like any of it was done for a clear reason other than its graphic factor; it takes a lot for me to physically look away from a film but this one definitely did it for me. The biggest example being the Scarface homage as Capone drifts through his waking nightmare during the final shootout. It was done in a nonchalant way accompanied by poor visual effects that really just grossed me out more than anything.
One of the parts of this film that I was genuinely excited for since the trailer was Hardy's performance: he remains one of my favorite actors but this might be his worst performance every. He struggles to make it through one scene without grunting, whining, or quite literally shitting himself and the pain that Capone felt was never embodied by Hardy whatsoever. The supporting performances from Linda Cardellini, Matt Dillon, and Kyle MacLachlan were *fine* and may have been some of the only watchable parts of this story. They really gave their all to try to make this bland and meaningless script come to life and I have to at least give them credit for that. I have yet to figure out what Josh Trank thinks of his own filmmaking because it frankly is heinous. This strange complex can be seen in the editing as well, which Trank also did. There is a reason that post-production departments exist and why, in the twenty-first century, directors typically do not edit their own films. His choice of pacing throughout this movie was complete garbage and the rapid-fire cuts in the calmest of scenes threw me for a loop. I was never able to delineate the timelines of this movie or what was supposed to be real and the editing never tries to solve that problem either. Not a single element about this film works well with each other as Trank reaches new levels of unintelligible filmmaking.
Tom Hardy deserves much better than this and while the approach to Capone is interesting, it never attempts to even reach its full potential. I was thoroughly disappointed in this film and I would honestly never recommend it to anyone regardless of how interested they may be in the history and legacy of one of the most infamous gangsters of all time. From the insufferable technicals to the nonsensical script, this film is just plain insulting and I couldn't help but feel massively irritated. What an absolute waste of talent and I mean that in every sense of the word.
My Rating: ★
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