Capone 2020 * * * Stars

Director: Josh Trank
Year: 2020
Rated R
Rating: * * * Stars
Cast: Tom Hardy, Linda Cardellini, Matt Dillon

"You can drop the act now". Tom Hardy couldn't drop the act if he tried. In Capone (my latest review), Hardy plays Al Capone and becomes as usual, the consignment chameleon.

Anyway Al Capone as a character, also goes by the tag Fonse (that's what everyone called him). Capone as a film, well it never has anyone saying his real name.

So OK, as something about the final year of Al Capone's decrepit life, Capone is a nightmarish breadth of view and not your typical crime drama. Shot like a TV movie but lush and gaping in its tone, Capone doesn't care whether or not you embrace its fever dream vision (bloodied detached eyeballs as a horse head metaphor are included here).

Now Capone does have a final, nasty shoot-'em-up with a gold-plated Tommy Gun. And yes, Fonse does make a few threats about cutting a poor soul's head off. But hey, Capone is not Scarface people. It's more a character study about a dude with dementia, a guy with neurosyphilis who can't control his own darn bowels. Third time director Josh Trank fashions Capone as a brute horror flick with an hallucinatory underbelly. He's not in the business of entertaining the audience. He'd rather sledgehammer his out of the box fancy.

The cast of Capone is all good with Hardy's Fonse basically hugging the screen via a mugging scowl for the ages. He is backed up proficiently with work from Noel Fisher (his son Junior), Matt Dillon (his mysterious buddy Johnny), and Linda Cardellini (his sympathetic wife Mae). Their personas are like frustrated rogues just waiting for Al to peacefully be put out of his misery.

All in all, Capone does do a good job of having shooting location New Orleans masquerading as Palm Tree-d, Palm Island, Florida. And yeah, the film's ominous score always gives you a foreboding feeling that something bad is about to happen.

Bottom line:  Capone at 104 minutes, could've been a little longer in length in order to provide more insight into this last days, true-life American gangster. But for what's abruptly on screen I'll take, even if it's cinematic "hatchet man". Rating: 3 stars.

Written by Jesse Burleson