Sonny Capone

Last night I watched one of the worst films I've ever seen. It sounds like a broad statement but Sonny Capone is the kind of film you could use to torture someone for information with. The warning signs were there from the start. A voiceover that sounded like it was read from a cue card with no practice beforehand. The father in the kitchen wailing. Those Italian accents that sounded like something from a 6th class Christmas play. At first it seemed funny, something you could enjoy with a bag of cans. It's an Irish film you think to yourself. I'll give it a chance, it has to get better. 92 minutes later you're watching the credits rolling and you're thinking to yourself "How did it come to this?"

This is the story of Sonny Capone, an Irish/Italian who's just become the Capo Di Tutti Capi of the Italian mafia. As a child he was taken from Dublin to Italy by his mother and he worked his way up through the ranks until he hit the top. Life is good, he has a beautiful woman by his side and the respect of his caporegimes. He's spreading his wings, dealing in international affairs and about to go worldwide when a phonecall from a family member he didn't even know existed flips his life upside down. Now he's headed back to where it all started and he's going to paint the streets of the Irish capital a bright, spurting red.

This was awful. 92 minutes of irredeemable putrescence. A film that would make you embarrassed to be Irish. It's so bad you can't even laugh at it. At first you'll think it's a joke and then slowly you'll realise someone made this earnestly and you'll feel genuinely bad for them. But you'll feel worse for yourself. It's filled with the kind of acting that makes Fair City performances look masterful. Every direction the story takes is ill judged, offensive and awkward. Our hero shoots numerous innocent women in the head and kidnaps Jewish men to be put into gas chambers (I fuckin wish i was making this up). The bad guys all get subplots that go nowhere and the film uses their abuse and terrorisation of the ladies in their lives as comedy fodder. Everything you can think of here goes wrong. Sonny can't even cook convincingly.

There's story decisions in here that will drop your jaw, not in awe but in horror, the aforementioned gas chamber, the bewigged skeleton, the bad guy who loves to be cuckolded, his wife and her face licking fetish, the twist in the 80th minute that will make you guffaw at it's sheer awfulness, the treatment of the female reporter who's abduction and murder is played off like a comedy sketch, the bit with the priest (there's two, i'm still not sure which is worse). It feels like a film made by someone who's never seen a film before. Or for that matter heard a foreign accent either because good christ there's some doozies in here. Stop reading for a minute and do your best Super Mario accent. It's awful isn't it. But there's a good chance it's better than what you'll hear in this. Every Italian accent has a Dublin one bleeding into it. Every Irish woman onscreen sounds Eastern european. After a while you won't even hear what they're saying, you'll just be concentrating on how badly it's all being mangled.

But don't worry, you won't miss anything. The plot is as by the numbers as you'll ever get. A simple revenge flick. How could it possibly go wrong? Well watch this and find out. You've probably noticed there's no mention yet of leading actor, writer or director. That's because all three are the one person and I don't want to embarrass him because this is one he'll be leaving of his resume.

Christ.

This is streaming on google movies now. Don't you dare watch it.