Rating summary

Movie		1.5
Video		3.5
Audio		4.5
Extras		0.0
Overall		3.0

Capone Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Brian Orndorf February 3, 2021

After scoring a commercial success with 2012’s “Chronicle,” director Josh Trank lost almost all of his critical and industry goodwill with his follow-up endeavor, the disastrous “Fantastic Four” do-over. While such a public flameout would kill most careers, Trank has managed to hang on to his employability by his fingertips, returning five years later with “Capone,” a much smaller picture for the helmer. While there was a lot of speculation as to who was really behind the colossal failure of “Fantastic Four,” “Capone” basically underlines Trank’s shortcomings as a storyteller, getting lost in his own unpleasant whims with the feature, which gradually becomes a prison sentence for viewers as it tracks the steady decay of Al Capone -- a tale nobody asked for, especially from Trank.

In 1941, after serving a decade in prison for tax evasion, Al Capone (Tom Hardy) returns to his Florida mansion to live out the rest of his days, fully decimated by syphilis contracted when he was a teenager. Surrounded by his underlings, wife Mae (Linda Cardellini), and his children, Al is in horrible shape, barely able to function as he presides over his kingdom, haunted by violent visions and the ravages of dementia, which has reduced him to a barely functioning vegetable. Within the decay of Al’s mind is information concerning the whereabouts of a sack containing 10 million dollars, which the F.B.I., represented by Agent Crawford (Jack Lowden), is interested in retrieving. Staking out the property, the Feds remain patient, trying to snatch any clue that emerges from Al’s mental fog, while the retired gangster tries to make it day-to-day, visited by old friends (Matt Dillion) and his doctor, Karlock (Kyle MacLachlan), while suffering through a loss of bodily functions and a general detachment from a reality where he once held great power.

“Capone” isn’t a bio-pic of the famous gangster, with Trank (who also scripts) selecting 1941 as the year of his story, catching up with the damaged man as he’s pulled out of prison and sent to Florida, downgraded from the threat he once was. It’s an interesting take on Al’s history, exploring the once authoritative criminal leader as he becomes human pudding, robbed of his mind and might as dementia begins to claim his body. Gone is the scary individual who ruled the underworld, replaced by an old man in pajamas who slips in and out of muddle Italian and has no control over himself, frequently urinating and defecating in his clothes. “Capone” isn’t going for pleasant, asking viewers to spend two hours with a diseased person, as Al looks out at the world through bloodshot eyes, showing limited signs of life as his loved ones worry about his condition. Trank could do a lot of different things with this moment in Al’s life, but he’s only really interested in making something abstract, turning biographical dirt into directorial mud.

Trank tries to bend “Capone” into a “Shining”-esque event, with Al hounded by visions of death and disorientation as he resides inside his cavernous Florida mansion. Without his sanity, the old man goes anywhere, visiting elements of his past and his guilt as he tours the darkness within, ending up in places he doesn’t want to revisit. Trunk’s approach is to accentuate this unreality, keeping Al in a state of chaos as he’s visited by those who care about him and those connected to the F.B.I. There’s paranoia in play as the titular character spies men in suits watching him from the woods, but the idea here is that nothing can be fully trusted, including those who’ve managed to achieve personal time with the dying man. Are they flesh- and-blood or just a ripple of confusion passing through Al’s swampy brain? Trank believes he’s making a mind-bender of sorts, with horror overtones, but he’s really sabotaging his own screenplay, which tries to build a plot out of the missing millions, though why should viewers trust the authenticity of such pursuit when the rest the endeavor enjoys dips into madness? The helmer can’t have it both ways.

Capone Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The AVC encoded image (2.39:1 aspect ratio) presentation does well with detail, providing a textured look at Hardy's makeup work, looking at ravaged skin and wounds. Sharpness is so strong at times, it's easy to spot the edges of Hardy's eye contacts. Interior decoration is crisp, exploring rooms in Capone's mansion, and exteriors provide ideal dimension. Colors are distinct, securing the bloodless pallor on the main character, while livelier period hues surround him. Greenery is precise. Delineation is satisfactory. The real issue here is artifacting, with numerous scenes diminished by banding and mild blockiness, which carries throughout the viewing experience.

Capone Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The 5.1 DTS-HD MA sound mix offers an immersive understanding of atmospheric changes, with heavy weather exploring the surrounds, and genre elements, including mansion activity and swarming bugs, utilize separation effects, adding to the feature's sense of agitation. Dialogue exchanges are precise, offering as much clarity as possible to Hardy's grunted performance. Sound effects are heavier, offering weight to tommy gun sprays, and music cues are equally full, detailed with sharp instrumentation.

Capone Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

There is no supplementary material on this release.

Capone Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

"Capone" struggles to find things to do, reveling in stretches of delirium and the puddling of bodily fluids. Trank gives the effort over to Hardy, who's never been one to turn down a chance to chew the scenery, going buck wild as the cigar-chomping, bilingual mumbling, decaying monster, chasing every acting tic he can think of. There's little discipline outside of the supporting cast (Cardellini deserves credit for trying to humanize Mae), and Trank has no sense of dramatic flow, with periodic stops to care for the feeble story (which includes a vague sense of Al's regret, emerging in the form of an illegitimate son trying to contact him) before it heads back to manic episodes. "Capone" is immediately exhausting and ultimately unrewarding, reaching nowhere of interest. And those hoping for a gritty Al Capone study are left with a better appreciation for the diapers he wore than the man he was.