Al Capone: The Untouchable Legend

Viewers get an immediate hint of the cheesy quality of this documentary on gangster Al Capone when it opens on a bus, "Untouchable Tours," driving through Chicago. The tour guide tries to liven things up with a bad accent and recorded gunshots, telling the giggling tourists to duck for cover. "Did we lose anybody?" he asks. Quite likely, the answer is: yes, he lost some viewers. Some of the primary commentators turn out to be members of the Merry Gangsters Fan Club, who meet to compare Capone memorabilia. "I would love to have lived in the '20s," one red-headed woman confides. "It was an era of a lot of fun. You could be a secretary by day and a gangster's girlfriend by night." To its credit, however, the documentary does include some serious commentary and the basic story of how Capone fled from the Coney Island underworld to Chicago, where Prohibition launched his career as king of the gangsters. In a way, the film argues, Capone was simply a good businessman who happened to eliminate his competition with Tommy guns. He provided soup kitchens for the poor during the Depression before prosecuting attorney George Johnson finally put him away for tax evasion. Released from Alcatraz in 1939, Capone retired to Miami, where he died of syphilis in 1947. The two most entertaining commentators in this documentary are veteran reporter Vern Whaley, who freely admits being on the take from Capone, and mafia expert Bill Balsamo, whose accent and mannerisms are classic Brooklynese. Unfortunately, the film relies excessively on clips from two corny old films about Capone, but even those are preferable to the staged modern dramatizations in this poorly written overview. Not recommended. (M. Pendergrast)