Tom Hardy's Wildest Role Came In This Crime Biography That Bent The Truth

British actor Tom Hardy isn't afraid of tackling some seriously strange and challenging roles, and his breakout role in Nicolas Winding Refn's 2008 crime film "Bronson" is a perfect example. In it, Hardy portrays a fictionalized version of real-life career criminal Michael Peterson, who changed his name to Charles Bronson in 1987, and he goes fully wild. We see him dressed as half-man, half-woman (divided vertically) and also get to watch as he strips nude and slathers himself in butter before fighting a whole team of prison guards. Yet somehow, "Bronson" isn't Hardy's wildest role. That distinction goes to another semi-historical crime movie that's very loosely based on a true story: Josh Trank's 2020 thriller "Capone." 

"Capone" didn't do particularly well with critics or audiences (despite /Film's Chris Evangelista rightly praising Hardy's performance and the film's absolutely gonzo gothic horror take on gangster history), but it's a truly unique project that deserves a little more respect and appreciation. After all, when you get an actor as intense as Hardy giving a film this bonkers some of his best work, it's guaranteed to be fascinating. 

Trank had been in director jail for a few years after his 2015 "Fantastic Four" reboot was an unmitigated disaster, but with "Capone," he was given free rein. Trank wrote, directed, and edited "Capone," and it's his singular vision that captures infamous gangster Al Capone (Hardy) in his final years as he's dying from complications due to neurosyphilis. Previous presentations of the gangster best known as "Scarface" (long before the fictional Tony Montana ever had anything to do with the moniker) have mostly presented him as a nigh-infallible figure, the mob boss to end all mob bosses, but Trank's version, which takes some liberties with the real-life events, renders him as a deeply flawed, broken man consumed by his past. "Capone" has more in common with the otherworldly dream-like storytelling of "The Sopranos" than it does with something like "The Godfather," but that works because it's ultimately more of a horror movie than a gangster story. 

Capone won quite a few battles with other gangsters and the law in his life, but in this movie, he's slowly losing one with his own body and mind as they deteriorate and there's nothing he can do about it. His reality becomes the viewer's and we see the horrific delusions he suffers, his mind torturing him as his body begins to totally fall apart. Trank doesn't spare us the nitty-gritty of Capone's slow death, showing a number of dignity-destroying moments, including Capone losing control of his bowels in bed. ("If you hate this movie, that's perfectly fine because you're reacting to something that's pretty real," Trank told THR. "I've dealt with people late in their lives in my own family, who are defecating themselves. It's a real thing. That happens in life. Was I being exploitative about it as far how much poop I dressed onto the bed? Yeah, I went a little overboard, but that's what I wanted to do. It's an impressionistic film, and it's meant to make a statement.") It's nasty, but it's also an effective reminder that we're all subject to our own mortality.

"Capone" isn't a glamorous role, and it must have been pretty unpleasant to get into the headspace of such a character, but Hardy absolutely understood the assignment. He gives his all in "Capone," delivering a performance that's absolutely unforgettable no matter how you end up feeling about the movie as a whole. He leans into the weirdness just as hard as he does with all of his roles, but here it's a perfect match as he goes full method and really gets gross and unhinged. (The movie's unsung hero, however, is an underused but truly spectacular Linda Cardellini as Capone's sweetly suffering wife, Mae, who provides a grounding presence for Hardy to rail against.) 

While some audiences were put off by the very loose interpretation of Capone's final days and others were just simply grossed out, for anyone with the stomach, "Capone" is a must-see. Where else are you going to witness Tom Hardy singing "If I Were King of the Forest" from "The Wizard of Oz," attack people with a gold-plated tommy gun, or chomp on carrots after his doctors take away his cigars? Hardy always swings big, but with "Capone," he knocked it way, way out of the park.