It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

Worth seeing just to witness how winsome it is.

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

Capone is a biographical drama film of the infamous Al Capone that stars Ben Gazzara stars as gangster that rose to command the mob underworld is Chicago during the 1920's.Harry Guardino,Susan Blakely and Sylvester Stallone co-star with him.The story of Al Capone starts when he joined his first gang when he was 11 years old.After being part of the infamous "Five Points Gang" run by Johnny Torrio,he moved to Chicago a few years later as wipes out Torrio's crimeboss uncle to become Johnny's right hand man and becomes head of the area's prostitution and racketeering business.Too bad that his empire deteriorates just as his mind does due to syphillis.There is nothing more about this gangster film except the memorable performance of Sylvester Stallone as Frank Nitti.This was definitely a good one before Stallone appeared in the film Rocky,a movie that made him a movie star.As for the others,too bad that there is nothing worth remembering about the performances of the cast including that of Gazzara.As for the screenplay and direction,it is definitely average even when compared at the time it was released back in the 70's and it will definitely be very dated by today's standards.

Although it plays quite liberally with the documented facts and makes a sizable number of historical blunders, this film nonetheless manages to be a worthy and engrossing presentation of the cagey and ambitious, but hot-headed and sadistic Al Capone's rise to power during the Prohibition era. Ben Gazzara delivers a marvelously fierce and volcanic portrayal of the notorious Capone: Cheeks stuffed with cotton, spitting out his profane dialogue with venomous aplomb, and glowering at his minions and enemies alike with unbridled seething rage, Gazzara's Capone makes for an appropriately loathsome and frightening psychopathic hoodlum. The strong supporting cast likewise do well in their parts: Harry Guardino as Capone's shrewd mentor Johnny Torrio, Susan Blakely as brash and free-spirited flapper Iris Crawford, Sylvestor Stallone as the traitorous Frank Nitti, Carmen Argenziano as loyal bodyguard Jack McGurn, John Davis Chandler as hateful rival Hymie Weiss, Royal Dano as crooked politician Anton J. Cermak, Dick Miller as wormy corrupt cop Joe Pryor, and Martin Kove as brutish strong-arm flunky Pete. John Cassavetes makes the most out of his regrettably small role as smooth capo Frankie Yale. Director Steve Carver, working from a tough no-nonsense script by Howard Browne, relates the absorbing story at a constant brisk pace, stages the thrilling shoot-outs with considerable muscular aplomb, and maintains a suitably gritty and hard-hitting tone throughout. Moreover, Carver deserves extra points for his decidedly harsh and unsentimental warts'n'all evocation of the 1920's period setting and his unsparingly graphic and equally unromanticized depiction of the more seamy and vulgar aspects of the mob. Vilis Lapenicks' cinematography makes nifty occasional use of slow motion and freeze frames. David Grisman's tuneful and jaunty score also does the trick. A solid and satisfying movie.

The movie is a largely fictional account of the life of Al Capone. When it was released, the critics bashed it, saying it was far too violent. It's a mobster film for crying out loud! It's gonna be violent! But enough complaining. There will always be some people who we'll never know exactly what they look like. Al Capone was one of those people. Ben Gazzara takes one look at the challenge and chucks it out the window. He is Capone, no question. Nobody else comes close. Not even Robert De Niro. This guy walks the walk and talks the talk, even if he has stuffed his cheeks with cotton wool. Susan Blakely is effective as the fiery Iris Crawford. She changes from a toilet-mouthed, cigarette-smoking, booze-swilling bitch to an 'innocent' dumb blonde gangster's moll halfway through, even if she does have trouble keeping her clothes on after her 'transformation'. Sylvester Stallone's Frank Nitti is just the kind of SOB you'd like to kick in the balls. Seriously. He's a traitor. His last words are "The guy you really gotta watch out for ain't across the street at all. He's the bum standing on the same ladder you are, right behind you." This has been his ethos all the way through the film. Harry Guardino's Johnny Torrio is perfect in every way but one. He's too tall. But asides from that, he's the best screen Torrio I've seen. (Actually, he's the only one I've seen) Overall, this film is exellent, but suffers from the stigma of having Roger Corman on the production crew. It's an amazing film, and anyone who is interested in the 1920s mobster era should watch it. 9/10

"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