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There's some decent names – Ben Gazzara, Harry Guardino, blink-and-you'll miss-him John Cassavetes – in this cheap biopic produced by Roger Corman but you can only assume they were on their uppers when it was made because it's not particularly interesting. Ben Gazzara's depiction of Capone borders on parody at times, and the film's opinion of him is unclear to say the least. It gives little insight into Capone's early years and while it sometimes has characters describing him as an animal it also depicts him as a caring, almost sympathetic, lover of a hard-living (but lusciously soft-bodied) flapper played by Susan Blakely. The plot takes us through Capone's life from the late teens to the mid-forties when, riddled with syphilis, his mind shot, he fishes at a swimming pool and raves about the Bolsheviks to people who aren't there. It probably touches all the bases – without really telling us much – but the truth of the story it relates is perhaps open to question. I was surprised to see a pre-Rocky Sylvester Stallone pop up as Capone's right-hand man who sells his boss out so that he can wear the crown. There's not much here about Stallone that suggests he's going to become a major action star – in fact he's probably miscast – but then everything about this film seems to be a little half-hearted.

The role of Al Capone, a large and expansive one is one that many actors just love to do. Joining the ranks of players who've essayed Chicago's legendary crime boss is Ben Gazzara. He ranks favorably with such folks as Rod Steiger, Jason Robards, Jr., Neville Brand and Robert DeNiro.

Roger Corman produced this film simply entitled Capone and we see Al Capone from his early days as a hoodlum in Brooklyn going west as Horace Greeley said to seek fame and fortune and he certainly finds it. The Chicago gang wars of the Roaring Twenties have passed into legend and some of those legends are portrayed here if not quite accurately.

In between all the violence is Susan Blakely who bares her all for art in this film. She's a pleasure driven, hedonistic, flapper from the Roaring Twenties and she's the girl who sparks Capone. Not a mention of the fact that he was a married man and also probably tried out all the women who went to work in Capone bordellos. It's no doubt where he got the syphilis that killed him eventually.

The theme of Capone is that one rises in the gangster ranks by the well timed double cross. It's how Capone rises and how he's dethroned. None of the gangster lore that has come down says what you see in the film is how it happened. In fact I doubt a lot of it. But it makes a nice story.

Gazzara is a mesmerizing Capone and young Sylvester Stallone is Frank Nitti who succeeds him as head of his organization. Blakely is one sexy woman and a lot of tongues will be hanging out.

Roger Corman gives us yet another version of Scarface. No doubt we'll see many more.

Psychopath? In his last years due to syphilis maybe, but even the movie's final scene showing him in Florida surrounded by gangster friends (allegedly including Frank Nitti, who had died some years earlier) rather than his family was absurd. Why did the film ignore his wife, son, siblings, and brother Ralph, who was the most important brother in the organization? And what's with that broad Iris, with him through out the movie? Pure fiction.

Even the killing of Jim Colosimo at his restaurant was baloney. Frankie Yale did it, though the lone witness recanted. One writer claims Capone hadn't yet arrived in Chicago at that time. Johnny Torrio knew Capone from New York, saw potential, and brought him west, so even the movie's opening scene of Capone's alley fight as a means of meeting Torrio was nonsense. Further,it was the George "Bugs" Malone gang that attacked Torrio in front of his apartment building, not a Capone plan... and you can bet the Torrio's didn't have a sign in front of their house displaying their true name! I could go on and on here about substituting fancy for fact, events omitted, but space is limited. Capone's social skills were far above average amonghis peers and the public. He always bargained first, not shot first, and had great loyalty to his men and kept his end of agreements. Visit a bookstore to get the true story instead of believing this absolutely ridiculous flick. BTW, Capone never exposed himself on the golf course or anywhere else, as far as is known.

OK I was bored, I watch this movie and the writing is not great. But the cast is fabulous: Ben Gazarra, John Cassavettes, Harry Guardino, Susan Blakely (who got quite naked, thank you very much) AND... a 29 year old Sylvester Stallone.

Lots of shooting, double crossing, you can do worse.

I have seen many actors hamming it up.But Ben Gazzara plays Al Capone in Al Jolson mode.I swear he was going to sing Mammy before the end.This is a really tacky movie made because The Godfather was such a hit.Avoid like the Plague.1 out of 10

Cheaply-made and over-simplified account of the life and times of the most notorious gangland figure of The Roaring Twenties; clearly intended as exploitation - with liberal doses of nudity and foul language to embellish the typical blood-soaked exploits - the Fox film was produced by Roger Corman (who was associated with any number of similar genre efforts, released in the wake of BONNIE AND CLYDE [1967] and which became an even greater commodity after THE GODFATHER [1972]).

As Capone, Ben Gazzara chews more than the scenery - as he obviously has placed something in his mouth to help 'authenticate' his delivery! Similarly, so as to give the impression of realism, the script continuously precedes scenes with the date and year when the event depicted is supposed to have happened; still, this doesn't prevent the film from appearing clichéd most of the time! Curiously, the film ends with Capone on parole going mad in some luxurious mansion - a turn of events which, as far as I know, is completely fabricated.

With the various real-life characters and myriad factions on display, one is prone to lose track of who's killing who and why - but, for all that, the carnage is constant and moderately well-staged (though, at one point, Corman inserts footage from his own film THE ST. VALENTINE'S DAY MASSACRE [1967], also a Fox production!). The cast is made up of veterans like Gazzara, Harry Guardino and a cameo by John Cassavetes, and newcomers such as Sylvester Stallone (a pretty good pre-stardom role as Capone's right-hand man who eventually has his boss ousted!), regular baddie Martin Kove (as a thug from a rival clan) and lovely Susan Blakely as Capone's young but free-spirited moll.

Needless to say, the film doesn't do justice to the character (seen in countless other gangster pics, the most significant impressions perhaps being those given, Method-style, by Rod Steiger in AL CAPONE [1959] and Robert De Niro in THE UNTOUCHABLES [1987]) - but neither is it the disaster Leonard Maltin claims, having slapped a BOMB rating to it! By the way, while the print on Fox's R2 DVD is O.K., the audio is pretty lousy (often displaying a distracting hiss).

Despite giving Sly Stallone second billing (after Ben Gazzara) and a nice big picture on my DVD cover, he is not a lead actor in this movie.

Ben Gazzara, Harry Guardino, Susan Blackeney (Yes that Susan Blackeney from "Lords Of Flatbush") are all listed before Sly who is listed under "Starring" with three other actors. Sly doesn't even appear until thirty one minutes in to it, and he doesn't speak a line of dialogue until ten minutes later, his part does grow as the movie enters its second half.

Plot In A Paragraph; Set over several years, this is the story of Al Capone's rise and fall in the gangster underworld.

Gazzara over acts and hams it up a lot. It's almost as if he thinks he is appearing in a spoof Capone movie. Harry Guardino is great as Johnny Torrio, as is Susan Blakely, I think her open crotch shot, must be the first one for a leading actress in a mainstream Hollywood film. Martivn Kove is very good in his supporting role. Dick Miller has an enjoyable small role as a cop on the take too. Following on from his first good role in 'Flatbush' the previous year, Sly under plays it as Frank Nitti and continues his early career with another steady supporting role.

Nobody can fault Capone for its effort. It covers several decades (taking several liberties with the truth along the way) in a short running time, but it's campy B movie quality all the way, as it rushes through a lot of gangster activity.

It's never dull and is quite entertaining in a trashy low budget way.

Never one to be concerned with realism, historical accuracy or taste, Roger Corman took on the now legendary story of gangster Al Capone. Corman is on production duties here, but the film has his trademarks all over it. Capone (played by Ben Gazzara, a little more convincingly than Jason Robards in the enjoyable The St. Valentine's Day Massacre) is jailed and questioned after beating up two policemen, to be bailed out by Frankie Yale (John Cassavetes) and Johnny Torio (Harry Guardino) who hold a growing influence over the police department. Capone is then taken under Torio's wing, as they try to distribute alcohol in Prohibition-era Chicago, while trying to calm the ongoing gang wars that are getting increasingly bloody.

As stated earlier, don't expect The Godfather. This is a gangsters tale, exploitation style. The film seems to want to tell Capone's story without getting bogged down in the details, and instead going for maximum entertainment value. And it does work to a certain degree - Ben Gazzara's ludicrously over-the-top performance is a lot of fun, and the fact that he's a genuinely very good actor adds a bit of class to the role. But I feel Corman's earlier gangster effort, The St. Valentine's Day Massacre (which he directed) was a lot more fun. That had a lot more going on to hold the attention, while the episodic nature of this film does get a bit repetitive after a while. Also, the majority of this film is not just a mere spin on the truth, it's outright lies. However, it's worth watching for Gazzara alone, and an early performance from Sylvester Stallone as Frank Nitti.

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I found Capone to be a very interesting film. The action scenes were well staged and the acting was surprisingly good. Ben Gazzara was excellent as Capone. He managed to capture Al Capone's VD induced psychosis very well. It's a shame that this film was never put out on video in the US. Unlike most biopics, I found this one to be very entertaining. Yo, check out Stallone as Frank "The Enforcer" Nitti

Recommended, if you can find it.

B+

One of the worst acting IV ever seen Stallone is ok in this but small part story and main aftor who plays Capone is one of the worst they have chosen for the part and the audio in this movie is questionable at best movie sucks hard.

Very few people remember this film (why is beyond me, it is one of the better acted gangster films--Even Sly Stallone does a decent job). But to the few of us that really remember this, it is because of a relatively unknown actress called Susan Blakely.

This is the first time from a major motion picture studio that an actress spread her legs (while completely nude, by the way) and showed us her very blond "Delta of Venus"--absolute motion picture history that, unfortunately should have catapulted her to the Sharon Stone level, but didn't.

I had to order from Great Britain and convert it from PAL to NTSC, but it was worth it!

Thanks forever, Susan!

If you were looking for an Al Capone biography that was more exciting than the 1959 film with Rod Steiger, you might like this one, but the only exciting thing for me were the gun battles. Ben Gazzara does well in the title role, but you can tell he has cotton in his jowls because some of his dialogue is incomprehensible. The casting was ideal, having Italian-American actors playing a gang of Italian-American mobsters (especially Sylvester Stallone as Frank Nitti). There is one point the film gets wrong. At the end of the movie, Nitti travels to Florida in 1946 to visit Capone, who is dying of syphilis. In real life, Nitti committed suicide in 1943, before Capone died.

Recommended only for a boring day.

A highly fictionalized biopic of Al Capone. Seeing Ben Gazzara in this called to mind his role as the small-town crime boss in Roadhouse. He did truly chew the scenery in this one, but then I think you have to in order to play Capone, as his violence and psychopathy is well-known. Susan Blakely was lovely and did the gangster moll thing quite well. Overall, it's decent but not great.

This hollow if AND perversely UNwatchable exercise in self-annihilation builds to a violent finale that finally makes good on the biopic's sordid potential, as Trank shoots his way out of oblivion with a sequence in which Capone does the same. It's a climax that manages to blur the line between truth and legend, and to clarify Trank's ambition of making a movie about how one tends to infect the other.

"Capone" is an excellent gangster movie! Ben Gazzara plays the best Al Capone I have ever seen! Actors such as Robert De Niro, Rod Steiger, Jason Robards and even Eric Roberts (hee hee) have played Al Capone but none of them can come near the accuracy and brilliance of Ben Gazzara's Al Capone. This movie was bashed by most critics, who said that this was an "exploited" version of the Capone story and that it was too violent and too brutal. Well, wasn't Al Capone himself a violent and brutal man? He was far from being a "saint" I guarantee that. The cast is fantastic; Sylvester Stallone (in one of his first roles); John Cassavettes who is always terrific; and Harry Guardino - a name you may not recognize but whose face you've seen in many movies. So how can you go wrong? You can't! "Capone" wasn't a made-for-tv movie that omits violence and profanity...something a true mob movie MUST have. It was a movie that was released in theatres. It had a poster (I have the original one sheet) and a MPAA rating of "R - Restricted." It has a reasonable length (101 mins.) and a wonderful story that could be told by great actors in a realistic way - without having to worry about the rules of television. It is also the only Al Capone movie to explicitly show Capone himself going insane because of Syphilis. Unfortunately, this marvelous movie is out of print and hard to find so see it if you can. You'll never see a better Capone movie....I guarantee it

Several reviewers have mentioned that this movie is hard to find. It is currently available on HULU.COM. Unfortunately you have to watch a few commercials, but the good news is that the copy is excellent. The characters are well developed and the pace is quick. While I would not say that the plot is overly realistic, it is worth watching. If you are looking for an engrossing, albeit brutal, diversion then this is the fare for you. Definitely NOT FOR CHILDREN. One of Sylvester Stallone first movie appearance and well acted by him. The other characters offer excellent performances as well. You will recognize many character actors in this ensemble cast. Hope you all enjoy this nearly classic mob movie.

There are enough pictures of Alphonse Capone available so that we know exactly what he looked like. Even though Ben Gazzara is a good actor, I couldn't watch this without thinking, "Not Capone, must be a different character of the same name." ;-)

Although a brutal man, Capone had enormous sense. He preferred making money to shooting down rivals, and always tried to negotiate first. He valued loyalty above all else, and he "broke the mold" by insisting that the clannish, ethnic gang style of old was gone and that a man's ethnic background ought to have no bearing in the outfit.

According to a recent biographer, Capone feared being shot and dying alone in the street more than anything else. Unlike in this film, he died as he had hoped: in bed surrounded by his family.

I've always been saddened by the thought that if Capone had wanted to go legit from the start, he could have done it. With his organizational skills he could have been anything he wished.

A little slow, at times. But, would make a great double feature, as first entry, with Capone (2020).