HINDSIGHT IS 2020: CAPONE (2020) ** ½

After spending ten years in prison for tax evasion, disgraced gangster Al Capone (Tom Hardy) is released from jail.  His body riddled with syphilis, the Feds allow him to live out his final days in seclusion in his Florida mansion.  While Capone’s mental and physical state deteriorates, he is haunted by his past and comes to terms with his encroaching demise. 

Capone is a really odd mix of genres.  At its heart, it’s a gangster movie, but it feels more like a ghost story.  Imagine The Shining Meets A Christmas Carol starring Scarface and that sort of paints the picture.  While it’s kind of plodding and uneven, the film is just weird enough to keep you watching. 

Hardy’s performance is really something too.  In fact, it’s pretty much the whole show.  He snarls, screams, pisses, shits, drools, and farts his way through the film.  Many movies shit the bed figuratively.  This one does it literally.  His funky cadence and growly delivery often makes him sound like the love child of Popeye the Sailor Man and the Tasmanian Devil.  (He even spends a good chunk of the movie with a carrot sticking out of his mouth just like Bugs Bunny.)  Hardy is one of those guys like Nicolas Cage who creates such a memorable, offbeat character that it often doesn’t matter if the finished film itself is any good or not (this one is a toss-up).  However, he’s so out there that you can’t help but keep watching.  Any actor who shits himself not once but THREE times in a performance probably deserves some kind of award. 

The rest of the cast is basically playing catch-up to his antics.  Linda Cardellini has the thankless role of his wife, Kyle McLachlan is his doctor, and Matt Dillon shows up for a bit as his fishing buddy.  I like all these actors, but they just aren’t in the same movie as Hardy.

Writer/director/editor Josh Trank also made that awful Fantastic Four movie.  He was about to make a Boba Fett flick too before he shot himself in the foot on social media.  Capone is his comeback film of sorts.  It’s not exactly good, however it’s just too weird and eccentric to completely dismiss.  It’s just out there enough to make me curious to see what he does next.

AKA:  Fonzo.