Josh Trank says fellow filmmakers encouraged him to make Capone weirder

Last Updated on July 30, 2021

It's been five years since Josh Trank's FANTASTIC FOUR was unleashed upon an unsuspecting public, and the director has managed to weather the fallout of that film and is back on the scene with CAPONE, a film which stars Tom Hardy as notorious gangster Al Capone. Following nearly a decade of imprisonment, dementia and illness has rotted Capone's mind and the gangster relives harrowing memories of his violent and brutal origins as he spends his final years struggling surrounded by friends and enemies.

Now, I haven't seen the film for myself yet, but by all accounts, it definitely isn't afraid to get weird, and while speaking with THR, Josh Trank said that fellow filmmakers, such as Rian Johnson (KNIVES OUT) and Joe Carnahan (THE GREY), encouraged him to make the film even weirder.

Yeah, everybody was like, “There are areas where you could be weirder. If you’ve already gone this far to make a movie this weird and this unexpected, own it. Own your shit.” No pun intended.

Josh Trank showed CAPONE to a variety of filmmakers as well as friends and family with the hope that they couldn't beat around the bush when it came to honest feedback. "This goes the same for a lot of friends of mine who I respect in the business, but when we show our work to people, we’re specifically showing our work to people who are going to give us a real heavy critical reaction to it and are not going to just be there to tell us what they think we want to hear like, 'Oh, it’s great.'" Trank said. "And the thing that I got feedback on every time from everybody I knew was the same thing: 'I just still can’t believe that this movie exists.' All of my filmmaker friends loved the movie for all of its weirdness, for Tom’s performance, for the places that it goes and for the things that it does. I haven’t gotten any feedback from anybody that has been tepid or lacking enthusiasm."

Our own Chris Bumbray, and now Managing Editor of JoBlo.com, reviewed the film last month, and although he wasn't sure whether he loved it or even liked it, he did say that it was a hard movie to dismiss. "You have to give Trank credit for making a wildly unconventional film, and even if it’s not necessarily entertaining, you can’t deny that it’s well made," Bumbray said. "For one thing, it’s very well-paced and I was surprised at how quick the 100-minute running time went by, as a movie like this, in less skilled hands, could have seemed endless." Bumbray added that Tom Hardy's performance is on another level of scenery-chewing, which, depending on your opinion of the actor, is either a very good or very bad thing.