New film releases
Capone
Dir: Josh Trank (1hr 43mins) (cert TBC)
★★
“He’s only gone and done it,” said Kevin Maher in The Times. Having exhibited an everstronger preference for roles that allow him to deliver more “constipated grunts” than actual dialogue, Tom Hardy has finally given his first “all-encompassing” non-verbal performance – and it’s “excruciating”. He is Al Capone in 1946. The once-feared mobster is now 47. He has been released from jail owing to advanced neurosyphilis, close to death, and is wandering around his Florida mansion in a giant nappy, hallucinating and shooting at ghosts from his past with a gold-plated Tommy gun. Hardy’s performance is ripe for parody, in a film that has no driving narrative, other than Capone’s swift decline, and which is punctuated by scenes of accidental defecation. These are reminiscent of a 1990s “gross-out comedy”, only rather more sombre. Director Josh Trank’s excuse was that he wanted to “deconstruct mythic ideas” about the infamous mob boss.
There’s a “regulation supporting cast”, said Tim Robey in The Daily Telegraph, including Linda Cardellini as Capone’s “weary” wife, and Kyle MacLachlan as a mob doctor. Their roles are paper-thin, but I was impressed by the “mesmerising intensity” of Hardy’s performance, said Peter Travers in Rolling Stone, and Trank is a genuine talent. He suffered bad press for his previous movie, 2015’s Fantastic Four, and seems to have intended this new one as a “personal take on public vilification”. Alas, the film is just too dull to support that ambition. Now available digitally in the US, but awaiting a UK release.