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So much average

Just what I expected

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

The years have not been kind to this flat 50's style recreation of 20's style gangsterism. The film is overwhelmed by Rod Steiger's performance and underwhelmed by the stiff conventionalism of the era's film making. The roaring 20's presented in the repressed 50's where decadence is bad table manners and spouting, yelling, and mumbling display an uneducated ignorance. Everything in this movie is tame where it should be wild and soft where it should be coarse.Historically Hollywood never did quite get it right, to be kind, and not even until very recently has the true ugliness and understanding of the unfairly glamorized criminal been portrayed for the destructive force that it is. Even so, even today, entertainment usually supersedes responsibility, but not because of community standards and motion picture code restraint.

Although Rod Steiger gives an electrifying performance as Al Capone in the film of the same name, it could have been done a whole lot better.Influenced by the success of The Untouchables on television the classical gangster film underwent a short revival for about five years in the late Fifties and early Sixties. It was inevitable that a film about the most notorious gangster name of all would get a biographical film.The film concentrated on Capone's public life and the stories of gangland lore that have circulated about him. Very little is shown of his personal life, he had a wife and child and many a mistress not just the character Fay Spain portrays. Rod Steiger has been accused of overacting in his characterization, but in fairness I don't think the writers and director gave him much to work with.With one exception no characters had name changes. The one being Martin Balsam's character who was based on reporter Jake Lingle whose connections with the underworld got him many a good story, but also compromised his integrity. Capone is shown being responsible for Balsam's death, but in real life there are many theories about Lingle's demise.One character is grafted in from New York. There was no such a character as James Gregory's honest inspector, mainly because there were damn few honest cops in Chicago in the Twenties. His character is based on Lewis J. Valentine who did run a confidential squad in New York City and faced a lot of political pressure from Tammany Hall. Under Fiorello LaGuardia, Valentine became the city's police commissioner, probably the best one we ever had.Still if you were a big fan of The Untouchables, you should definitely like this Al Capone movie.

This 1959 factual biography of gang lord Al Capone follows his rise and fall in Chicago gangdom during the Prohibition era. It stars one of my favorite actors of all time Rod Steiger, in an all out tour-de-force. After seeing this excellent gangster movie a long time ago, there has been no actor in any Al Capone role, that has came close to this film by Steiger. He is brutal to see the least, and his rise to power in Chicago is amazing to see, because it is based on true events. Great film, even after all these years Steiger is truly amazing as Capone. Be sure and catch this on DVD, the transfer is exceptional. No extras, but it's well worth watching.

Many actors have portrayed Capone over the years. It's virtually a "cottage industry," guaranteeing that yet another Capone flick will hit the screens before the collective audience has quite recovered from its yawn at the last one. And yet, for me, no one has ever come quite so close to nailing the role as Rod Steiger in this 1959 black-and-white low-budget effort.As a matter of fact, using the term "low-budget" does this film a disservice, calling to mind as it does the run-of-the-mill output of producer/distributor Allied Artists (usually on the scale of "Attack Of The 50-Foot Mummified Woman Meets Godzilla's Teenage Werewolf Son"). For this film, however, the studio assembled a strong acting ensemble which includes Martin Balsam, Nehemiah Persoff, Murvyn Vye, and James Gregory, all of whom deliver standout performances. Yet it's Steiger whose performance holds this film together. His Capone is a monster whose mood swings defy the term "mercurial," yet his psychopathy seems somehow strangely -- disturbingly -- human. You can sense the demons deep within him, and how they drive him, but you're never allowed to glimpse them, not even momentarily, lest you lose sight of the fact that this man truly is a monster. Eerily compelling, even hypnotic (particularly as he woos -- and wins! -- the widow of a cop he's previously murdered), Steiger invests his characterization with the bravura of the opera which the real-life Capone professed to admire. Alternately wheedling and bullying, bellicose and scheming, he assumes a larger-than-life mythos which resonates all the more uncomfortably due to a sense of plausibility, the feeling that such men do continue to exist among us.The storyline itself is more or less factual, save for Gregory's character (which isn't even really a composite of any particular real-life law enforcement personnel), as well as a decision to re-name Balsam's character rather than use the identity of the real-life Jake Lingle, upon whom the character is based. Certain incidents have been fictionalized as to the way they happened, but that's to be expected in the interest of dramatic effect.Overall, the film achieves an almost documentary effect. Steiger's performance makes it a very chilling documentary, indeed.