Capone (2020) - Movie Review

Five years after his career-defining clusterfuck with Fant4stic, writer/director/editor Josh Trank has returned with a decidedly lower-key feature, covering the final year in the life of notorious gangster Al Capone. For a lot of the past five years, there’s been debate about what exactly caused Fant4stic to turn out as bafflingly as it did, with Trank himself attributing it to studio interference. I myself wondered if that was the case, as it was the only explanation that could come close to making sense of what happened… but the only real way to prove that was if Trank was able to come back, properly in the driver’s seat, and deliver a feature that showed he still had the talent he showcased so bracingly back with Chronicle. And far as I'm concerned, he actually managed it here.

Let’s start with Tom Hardy in the title role, because this is a performance so weirdly singular as to make for one of his best ever. Portraying Capone in the final year of his life, when his syphilitic brain essentially made him a public enemy to no-one but himself, the makeup effects are scarily effective at showing this hardened criminal at his most frail. The clawed scars on his face, the bloodshot eyes, the sickened hobble with which he carries himself; it all fits.

Then there’s the delivery of the dialogue, which is its own can of worms. He growls through his lines with such an odd tone that he comes across like he’s auditioning for a Power Rangers monster… but honestly, more so than anything that kitsch, the main thing he kept reminding me of was John Bain, known in Internet circles as video game pundit TotalBiscuit. When TB was in the final stretch of his own life, before cancer snuffed him out for good, all the scar tissue and surgery he had gone through had led him to sounding profoundly not like himself. Hell, to be brutally honest, during the last handful of videos he put his voice to, he barely sounded human; just a sentient death rattle that was all too aware of how close it was to the end. And that, in a nutshell, is the consistent vibe gotten from Hardy here, and it does wonders for the bigger story being told.

Then there’s the soundtrack, and anyone familiar with my hip-hop-fixated ways will doubtless be unsurprised that I got a lot to say about this as well. Now, admittedly, this isn’t even remotely what I was expecting to hear from underground heavyweight El-P, formerly known as mastermind behind the legendary record label Def Jux, and known nowadays as one-half of the curb-stomping superduo Run The Jewels. Throughout his career, he’s been known as the hip-hop answer to prog-rock, with all the musical bombast and sci-fi obsession that implies. Since teaming up with Killer Mike, though, he’s stripped that back a little and incorporated more Southern hip-hop and even trap influence into his sound.

Here, we get neither ends of that spectrum. It doesn’t incite marching against the horrid establishment, nor wielding idiosyncratic weapons for one’s own weird cause, both of which would’ve already been perfectly apt for a film about one of America’s most infamous names Instead, it sounds a lot closer to something Philip Glass would put together in all its droning minimalism (maybe he picked up some tips when they both worked on the Fant4stic soundtrack). Its muted tones and atmospheric ambience are primed more for internal contemplation, like the background score for a blood-soaked meditation session. That also ends up fitting, as that is basically the tone of the entire film.

Trank’s depiction of Al Capone is one that exists primarily within Capone’s dementia-riddled psyche, as he attempts to live what’s left of his life in as much comfort as can be allowed him. This ends up translating into more than a couple occasions where he visibly and literally shits himself, but the film never tries to pass this off as comedy at the expense of a violent monster. Okay, mostly doesn’t, as the vision of Scarface singing along with the Cowardly Lion is an image that will never cease to befuddle and amuse.

Primarily, though, it shows Capone being just as cursed by regret as he is by any medical diagnosis. As the barrier between his memory and his current reality keeps fracturing, we see all manner of nightmarish recollections of his criminal exploits, like the horrific depiction of the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, with Capone tripping over bloodied bodies in a dark Chicago backstreet, or a scene that owes as much to the finale of Oedipus Rex as it does to the more graphic depictions of mob torture.

DOP Peter Deming, who has made a plentiful career out of visualising the darkly psychedelic, from Mulholland Drive to Drop Dead Fred, brings a lot of emblematic power to the proceedings, right down to Capone wielding a gold-plated tommy gun, mowing down enemies only he can see, in a moment where the fascination with American gangsters gets caught with its pants down.

Having reviewed films like Gotti in the past, I have no end of great things to say about a film like this, one that demystifies the entire aura that surrounds this brand of legendary gangsters, highlighting the physical and psychological toll that his exploits ultimately had on him. Knowing how much Capone is aggrandised in popular culture, hip-hop especially, this whole exercise feels like a much-needed come-down from all the vicariously bad-boy living I and many other audiences partake in with typical gangster flicks. Whether this ultimately proves Josh Trank right about his prior missteps remains to be seen, but it at least shows that wherever he goes next, the dude’s still got the touch.