capone

15 May

Al Capone: 10 Actors Who Played the Original Scarface

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Mother of mercy, did the movies mark the beginning of RICO? The Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act was named after the character Rico Bandello in what is largely considered to be the first gangster movie, Little Caesar. While Edward G. Robinson’s Rico wasn’t specifically Al Capone in that film, the real-life gangster’s signature cigar fumes are all over it. Josh Trank replaced the Cuban Corona with a carrot in the recent Vertical Entertainment film Capone, which stars Tom Hardy as the title character in his twilight years, suffering from a premature burial. The aging mobster’s memories were buried by…

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14 May

The Real History of Al Capone

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New movie Capone is set in the twilight years of America’s most infamous mobster. The slashes across his cheek which gave him his nickname “Scarface” are still there, but the movie is more concerned with deeper wounds. In spite of the Tommy gun and the Cotton Club from Hell scenes, Josh Trank’s Al Capone biopic is a tearjerker, not a gangster movie. Capone is 47 and his mind is rotting from the dementia caused by years of untreated syphilis. But then there were people in the industry who never thought the man who was the face of the mob had…

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13 May

Al Capone’s Lost Treasure and Why It Was Never Unearthed

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Capone, written and directed by Josh Trank of The Fantastic Four fame, isn’t a gangster film so much as it is a tearjerker. It is set when America’s most infamous gangster is 47 and his mind is rotting from dementia. Beneath the family tragedy is a national mystery. Whatever happened to the millions of dollars Capone stashed before he went to jail for tax evasion? Geraldo Rivera tried to answer this in the run-up to his 1986 TV special, The Mystery of Al Capone’s Vaults. But when he opened Capone’s secret vault in the Lexington Hotel live on TV, there…

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12 May

How Josh Trank and Tom Hardy Brought Capone to Life

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Capone is the last movie you’d ever brand as a “traditional gangster pic.” While the infamous mobster’s seven-year reign of terror as head of the Chicago rackets in the 1920s has been chronicled in movies like The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre (1967) and The Untouchables (1987), the final stages of Capone’s life — addled by dementia and neurosyphilis at his Palm Island, Florida estate after his release from prison — have been explored less than his earlier, more colorful exploits. Enter Josh Trank. After bursting onto the Hollywood radar in 2012 with his found-footage deconstruction of superhero and comic book…

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11 May

Capone

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Once a ruthless businessman and bootlegger who ruled Chicago with an iron fist, Alfonse Capone (Tom Hardy) was the most infamous and feared gangster of American lore. At the age of 47, following nearly a decade of imprisonment, dementia rots Alfonse’s mind and his past becomes present. Harrowing memories of his violent and brutal origins melt into his waking life. As he spends his final year surrounded by family with the FBI lying in wait, this ailing patriarch struggles to place the memory of the location of millions of dollars he hid away on his property.Rated: RRelease Date: May 12,…

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11 May

Capone Review: Tom Hardy Misfires

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There’s a cathedral on Chicago’s North Side that I liked visiting as a kid. In its cornerstone, a bullet hole still lingers nearly a century after it shattered the rock: a leaden forget-me-not of the day Al Capone’s gunmen executed Earl “Hymie” Weiss on the church steps. Growing up, it was like communing with a mythological past. But then the less you know about wiseguys and gangsters, the grander they can appear. The real Al Capone was obviously not a mythic figure or a comic book supervillain; he was a thug with a gun and a big mouth who died…

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16 Apr

Capone Trailer Asks If Scarface ‘Faked’ Dementia

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Could Al Capone’s famed syphilitic dementia have all been an act? It would’ve been a brilliant ploy. Consider that mob boss Vincent Gigante walked the streets of the West Village in a bathrobe to put on a public performance of a mentally broken man. He kept up the act in court, during affidavits, tests, interviews and under more forceful questioning. But all the while, Gigante ruled the Genovese crime family from 1981 to 2005. The trailer for Capone promises to deliver an “untold final chapter” of his life by suggesting the original Scarface perfected a similar dog and pony show,…

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15 Apr

Tom Hardy’s Fonzo Retitled ‘Capone’ and Set for VOD Release

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We’ve been excited to get a look at Josh Trank’s upcoming movie Fonzo for a while now. The film, Trank’s follow up to his disastrous Fantastic Four reboot, is set to portray notorious mob boss Al Capone (Tom Hardy) as the “ruthless businessman and bootlegger who ruled Chicago with an iron fist,” having earned a reputation as “the most infamous and feared gangster of American lore” but the story is to follow a less explored and potentially far weirder aspect of the gangster’s life, as the effects of syphilis turn past to present, and “harrowing memories of his violent and…

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