Capone Reviews

Contrived gangster film has Gazzara portraying the inhuman Capone who rose through mob ranks in Chicago to dominate a brutal underworld in the 1920s, until his fall through federal conviction of income tax eviction and eventual imprisonment. Gazzara appears to have stuffed 10 pounds of cotton into each cheek (replacing the necessary tongue) to get that jowly Capone look or the Godfather image projected by Marlon Brando. No amount of swaggering or overacting is convincing here; Gazzara is simply an embarrassment, and the scenes showing the gangster going crazy (from paresis of the brain stemming from syphilis) are absurd. Producer Corman geared this cliche-ridden monstrosity simply for violence, his metier, but no new insights or information on one of America's great monsters are offered. In fact, little new footage is added, with most of the mob war scenes culled from other films (chiefly from THE ST. VALENTINE'S DAY MASSACRE, which Corman and writer Browne released in 1967, a superior product but no less bloody). The only interesting character is Stallone, who gives good support as a Capone turncoat.