With ashen skin, blood-red eyes and a voice that
is so raspy as to be almost unintelligible, Hardy’s
Capone looks like a drawing of a comic book
gangster that’s gone too far.
“Fonse” (the name Al is not to be uttered on the
property) totters around his well-groomed and
cliche Floridian mansion in an open robe with
a cigar (and, later, a carrot) hanging out of his
mouth. When he’s not shouting at his wife (Linda
Cardellini) or gardeners, he can often be found
with a thousand-yard stare which either means
he’s about to go into a flashback sequence or is
soiling himself — he does both quite frequently.
His decay is cartoonish, as though all of his past
sins are oozing out of his brain and body. They
are laid out just as chaotically and unpleasantly
in “Capone” for audiences to make sense of.
“Capone” is the work of filmmaker Josh
Trank, who, you may recall, is the blockbuster
wunderkind who became a bit of a pariah in
under four years. His film “Chronicle” made
him, at 27, a precious box office superstar who
earned comparisons to Spielberg and Cameron.
But his decline started before he could make
good on the assumption that he was the next
big thing. He was then hired, and fired, from a
Star Wars film. But perhaps his most infamous
moment was when he distanced himself from
his expensive “Fantastic Four” reboot a day
before it opened (and bombed) with a tweet
implying that studio interference ruined his
once great film.
Although we’ll never get to see what he might
have done left to his own devices with “Fantastic
Four,” for better or worse “Capone” is fully a Josh
Trank product. He wrote, edited and directed.