| Vertical Entertainment | Release Date (Streaming): May 12, 2020 | CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION | ||
|
Positive:
12
Mixed:
16
Negative:
9
|
Watch Now
Critic Reviews
Josh Trank’s somber, small-scale drama is not the guns-blazing Al Capone biopic some gangster movie fans might be expecting, but it’s a curiosity that nevertheless demands a look-see for a fresh take on a crime legend whose most notorious exploits have been retold many times already.
Read full review
RogerEbert.comMay 12, 2020
The star's Capone Voice is really something else, though — right up there with Hardy's Bane in "The Dark Knight Rises" and the title character of "Bronson" and the murderous trapper in "The Revenant" in goofy daring, as well as raw material for celebrity impressions that one might attempt while buzzed at a party. No matter how many times you hear it, it never seems to issue organically from the man on the screen.
Read full review
The GuardianMay 11, 2020
It’s an interesting film, which Trank tops off with a contrived finale of bizarre, spectacular (and contrived) violence, yet the woozy slipping-into-dementia-fantasy sequences, although striking, mean sometimes that the visual impact of what we are seeing is sometimes lessened, as we wait to see if it is really happening or not.
Read full review
Capone presents the man’s health problems as a different sort of comeuppance: a reckoning of the mind and body, though not necessarily of the soul. But that doesn’t leave Hardy terribly much to do but dismantle his intimidating presence; it’s a commanding physical performance in search of a richer characterization, of any sense of who Capone was.
Read full review
Maybe what's most frustrating is how much the movie's deeper themes — morality, mortality, the twilight of power — churn intriguingly at the edges of nearly every scene only to turn toward sentiment, or become merely secondary to its relentless focus on his physical decline. There’s merit, of course, in exploring the good and bad in every man, even one as notorious as this one; Capone, in the end, just settles for ugly.
Read full review
The PlaylistMay 11, 2020
In any biography/drama, the key is to make audiences believe this is the real person from history. Capone just never gets there. That could be Al Capone, but nothing in the film makes me believe it’s him, nor emotionally connect with him. Capone wastes a lot of good talent, and it’s a shame.
Read full review
It’s potentially fresh and unique material, but from the first scenes through the tone-deaf conclusion, Capone is a noxious film about a noxious man — a gruesome and grotesque viewing experience that tells us nothing new about Capone while rubbing our noses in one detestable scene after another. By the time we get to a typically overblown scene in which a diaper-wearing Capone wields a gold-plated Tommy Gun while on a shooting spree, we surrender.
Read full review
There is, alas, nothing enriching about Capone. It offers none of the robust competence these dwindling-culture times are running low on. Perhaps more dismayingly, it’s not even entertaining. The film’s arresting oddity is fleeting, and then we’re just made to sit with it for another humid 90 minutes.
Read full review
An angry, violent and despairing film, without much of a point other than that existence can be angry and despairing and memory is a prison. As a piece of art, entertainment or cultural ephemera, it is indeed bold, but it is significant not for what it says about Capone, but rather what it says about Trank, and the ongoing saga of his career.
Read full review
Current Movie Releases
By MetascoreBy User Score


























