And Kyle MacLachlan plays the physician who suggests the family give him a carrot instead of a cigar, since he won’t notice anyway. The supporting cast is wasted (it’s not just Cardellini). There are threads that are introduced with little resolve: The possible $10 million that he’s hidden and lost, the FBI agent (a compelling Jack Lowden) who has to convince his own boss that Capone is worth continuing to investigate, and the out-of-wedlock son who keeps calling and appearing to him. Hardy’s go-for-broke performance is certainly jaw-dropping, but not exactly effective in drawing you in to care about his story or his regrets. And although “Capone” has interesting elements and a strong style, it is also deeply flawed and a bit of a slog to get through. 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.Īlthough 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 was then hired, and fired, from a Star Wars film. But his decline started before he could make good on the assumption that he was the next big thing. His film “Chronicle” made him, at 27, a precious box office superstar who earned comparisons to Spielberg and Cameron.
“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. They are laid out just as chaotically and unpleasantly in “Capone” for audiences to make sense of. His decay is cartoonish, as though all of his past sins are oozing out of his brain and body. 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. “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. 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. It’s this chapter that gets the focus in “Capone,” a hallucinatory and messy (in all respects) film starring Tom Hardy as the once great crime boss who is now hardly recognizable to himself or his family and in a state of rapid decline. Then he died of a heart attack on January 25, 1947. It sounds like a pretty nice end for the notorious Chicago gangster, until you realize that he spent those post Alcatraz years suffering from declining health, dementia and the long-term effects of a syphilis infection from when he was just a teenager that went untreated. 24, the judge announced his sentence: 11 years and a $50,000 fine.įollowing his release after serving seven years in prison, and suffering from advanced syphilis, Capone retreated to his Florida mansion with his wife, Mae, until his death in 1947.This image released by Vertical Entertainment shows Tom Hardy in a scene from "Capone." (Alan Markfield/Vertical Entertainment via AP)Īl Capone lived out his final years on a grand estate in Palm Island, Florida, with his wife, Mae, by his side and grandchildren running around the property. 17, 1931, a jury convicted the notorious gangster of tax evasion in a federal court in Chicago. “We see people wandering the block looking lost and we just point at the home,” he said. Roderick Sawyer (6th), who lives across from Capone’s former home, said he hasn’t been in touch Varan about his plan, but he and other neighbors do not want the home to become more of a tourist attraction than it already is. The real estate agent who helped Varan buy the Capone home said Varan had hoped to restore it and turn it into a Capone museum, but for a number of reasons, including the pandemic, the plan has stalled.Īccording to his company’s website, Varan, who does not live in Chicago, is working on a Broadway musical about Capone.Īld.