An average movie

Following the ‘Fantastic Four’ debacle, Josh Trank still managed to come up with a new directing effort but, even though it turned out to be another critical bomb, I was still eager to check the end-result. Well, to be honest, I wonder why this movie had received such harsh reviews since it was far from being such a terrible disaster. Indeed, the movie was visually well made and Tom Hardy, probably one of the most interesting actors at work nowadays, delivered here another strong performance. However, I have to admit that the damned thing still didn’t really work though. It did remind me of another movie I saw a couple of years ago called ‘The Happy Prince’ which was dealing with the last year(s) of Oscar Wilde. Indeed, even if this approach might seem intriguing, in both cases, the makers made the same mistake to assume that, if someone is famous, their last years will always be fascinating to behold but it is actually rarely the case and definitely not with this movie. Indeed, basically, from the very beginning, Al Capone A.K.A. Fonse was in terrible shape and most of the movie was about watching him going from one mental meltdown to another or some other form of psychotic episode. So, even if it was rather well made and Hardy was solid, it felt rather repetitive fairly quickly and, like I said before, not as interesting as the makers were obviously hoping for. There were also a few sub-plots but they were all rather half-baked and even less interesting than the degeneration of the notorious gangster. Eventually, the most pathetic plot line was probably the one involving the FBI trying to catch him one last time. I mean, sure, the guy did some terrible things but, at this point, he was most of the time pretty much batsh*t crazy and already going through a slow and painful death so going after him was not only rather pointless but also really stupid. Anyway, to conclude, in spite of its flaws, I don’t think this movie deserves such a bad reception though and it is actually worth a look.