Stometer Save your money for something good and enjoyable

Jenna Walter The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

Hayleigh Joseph This is ultimately a movie about the very bad things that can happen when we don't address our unease, when we just try to brush it off, whether that's to fit in or to preserve our self-image.

Fulke Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

mlraymond This film is a real curiosity.It is notable for a few reasons: raw language that would not have been allowed prior to the Seventies, but might be close to the way real gangsters would have spoken to each other; total frontal nudity, and an early appearance by Sylvester Stallone. The portrayal of Al Capone by Ben Gazzara is so broad as to be farcical, apparently on purpose.There is a lot of exaggerated humor and comic antics in the film that make it seem like it wasn't meant to be taken too seriously. By contrast, the 1959 Al Capone with Rod Steiger had a certain gallows humor and bleak comedy, but never at the expense of the historical figures being portrayed. When Rod Steiger bellows and blusters, connives and threatens, you believe he's Al Capone. Gazzara seems almost to play Capone as if he were in a Saturday Night Live sketch. I saw this movie in its original release to theaters, with a high degree of audience involvement. An elderly gentleman, who had apparently had a few too many before the show, talked to characters in the movie and gave advice and pointed out things throughout the screening, climaxing with a gunfight where Al Capone was ambushed by rivals, and the elderly viewer stood up in the aisle, pointed his cane at the screen like a tommy gun and hollered "I'll help you, Al!", while firing his cane at the screen. This somehow seems the appropriate spirit in which to view this film.

Ron Broadfoot 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.

rlcsljo 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!

MachineGunKath 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