Everything You Need To Know About 'Capone', Tom Hardy's Gangster Biopic

From Esquire

We've finally got some detail on when we're likely to see Tom Hardy's Capone, in which Hardy plays a late-period Al Capone struggling with ageing and the ghosts of his criminal past.

On Twitter late year, director Josh Trank revealed that after delays to production pushed its release back, Capone – formerly known as Fonzo while it was in production – was definitely going to turn up in 2020. At the time, of course, it was going to be released in an actual cinema, but the old 'rony saw to that. That god damn 'rony.

Instead, we're getting a release on streaming services on 12 May so you can watch it at home. A trailer arrived in early April too, though you'd have been forgiven for missing it what with everything else going on.

There's also been a steady stream of pictures on Hardy's Instagram. There's some more if you scroll down a bit.

Images have been trickling out over the last six months or so, and most of them focus on Hardy's remarkable physical transformation into the wreck that the former mob boss became later in life.

Unnerving. But what else do we know about Capone so far?

What's it about?

Hardy's Capone isn't the untouchable crime boss of his youth – his health is failing and he's haunted by the violence and crimes which made him public enemy number one during the 1920s. (Peaky Blinders fans might note some little echoes of Hardy's Alfie Solomon, similarly physically crumbling but still imposing.)

It looks from the trailer like it's going to use Capone's increasingly tenuous grasp on reality to weave flashbacks and time-jumping visions into the plot. Capone, by the way, is a riff on Capone's first name, Alphonse.

Who's in it?

Tom Hardy, obviously, who looks extremely menacing in the couple of images we have of him in character from his Instagram and some extremely long-lens pics of him on a boat wearing a very nice dressing gown.

The rest of the cast includes Twin Peaks' Kyle McLachlan, Lynda Cardellini from Mad Men as Capone's wife Mae, and Matt Dillon from Crash and There's Something About Mary. Here's a pic of Kyle McLachlan looking quite dashing on set.

Have we got any more pictures?

You betcha! Feed these into your optic nerves, post the information to your brain, let it figure it all out, enjoy the results. Turns out even Capone wasn't immune to Thanos' universe-wide snap.

Nice profile shot.

Bit creepier now.

Where do I know the director from?

If you're feeling charitable, you'll remember him from the very good 2012 found footage kids-get-superpowers film Chronicle. If you're feeling uncharitable, you'll saddle him with the debacle that was Fantastic Four with Michael B. Jordan and Miles Teller.

Given the intimations of studio fiddling that came out after its release, that probably wasn't his fault though. Don't hold it against him. Trank has written and edited Capone on top of his directing duties.

What's the history behind it?

Chicago gangster Capone was jailed for tax evasion in 1932, when he was 33. Upon arriving at Atlanta US Penitentiary, he was diagnosed with gonorrhoea and syphilis, as well as having withdrawal symptoms from an absolutely colossal cocaine habit which had worn through his septum.

Eventually that syphilis turned into neurosyphilis, which affected Capone's mental capacity. He was moved to Alcatraz in 1936 after being bullied - and later stabbed - by other inmates, and spent the last year of his sentence in the prison hospital as his condition deteriorated. He was paroled in November 1939 and spent the rest of his life in varying states of illness until he died on 25 January 1950 aged 48.

Anything else to know?

Yes: it's being scored by El-P from Run the Jewels, AKA Jaime Meline, which is extremely promising.

If you've not got into RTJ yet, get to it. Capone's also getting some encouraging early noise from other directors, including Knives Out and Star Wars: The Last Jedi's Rian Johnson.

"This movie is batshit bonkers (in the best possible way) and believe me you’re going to want to see it," Johnson tweeted in mid-April.

When's it out?

As we said in the intro - if you just listened for one second - it's out on 12 May on streaming services.

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