Gangster TV series don’t get any more definitive than Boardwalk Empire. This period masterpiece created by Terence Winter and co-produced by Martin Scorsese features countless real-life mobsters, but none of them is as iconic as Alphonse “Al” Capone, the notorious head of the Chicago Outfit from 1925.
Capone only plays a secondary role in Boardwalk Empire, which is fronted by Steve Buscemi’s best career performance as semi-fictional Atlantic City treasurer Enoch “Nucky” Thompson. But when the Chicago mob boss does appear, actor Stephen Graham makes sure his scenes leave their mark.
Indeed, Graham’s best line as Capone comes during a season of Boardwalk Empire from which the mafioso has been almost entirely absent. His lack of screentime makes the quote even more effective as a climactic moment that steals the show. At the same time, it defines what being a high-level gangster is all about.
Although Boardwalk Empire dramatizes a specific era of American history, its delicate balance between broad genre tropes with period authenticity imbues it with a certain timeless quality, which Graham’s portrayal of Al Capone exemplifies. Moments like the climax of season 3’s eleventh episode deserve just as much acclaim as fellow gangster show The Sopranos at its best.
Al Capone’s Best Boardwalk Empire Quote Comes In Season 3
When people think of Stephen Graham’s best movies and TV shows, This Is England, Adolescence, Line of Duty, and The Irishman tend to be the ones that spring to mind. Yet, Boardwalk Empire is the series that essentially broke Graham in the United States, and for good reason.
His swaggering, boldly charismatic performance as Al Capone is on a par with Robert De Niro’s turn in The Untouchables. Capone’s best line in Boardwalk Empire is a major highlight in the show, not least because it arrives at such an unexpected point in Nucky Thompson’s story.
Prior to the season 3 episode “Two Imposters”, Nucky last saw Capone in the season 1 finale, set more than two years earlier, when he attended a meeting with Johnny Torrio to establish a truce between the Chicago Outfit and Nucky’s operation in Atlantic City. Capone does appear in other season 3 episodes, but his story is always secondary to the main plot.
We don’t see him at all for almost three episodes before Nucky’s younger brother, Elias “Eli” Thompson, reveals that he’s made an alliance with someone in Chicago. Capone steps forward with a cigar in his mouth. “We’ve been on the road for 18 hours,” he tells Nucky. “I need a bed, some chow… And then you and me sit down, and we talk about who dies. Eh?”
The final part of this dialogue, which Capone delivers with gleeful malevolence, sums him up as a character. Both in real life and in Boardwalk Empire, the young gangster’s rise to the top is marked by acts of merciless killing taken in his stride, as though part of an ordinary daily routine, alongside sleep and eating “some chow”.
This Quote Defines The Essence Of The Gangster Genre
Beyond Al Capone’s stomach for bloody murder in Terence Winter’s period crime masterpiece, the phrase “we talk about who dies” can be applied to much of what happens in any given screen gangster story. While scenes of graphic, deadly violence are commonplace, what defines the genre more than anything else is the looming threat of such violence.
Mobsters are at their most terrifying onscreen when they’re talking about a hit in coded language, or have visibly come to the decision that an important character in their story has to die. Whether we’re watching a definitive gangster movie like The Godfather or Goodfellas, or a show like The Sopranos or Boardwalk Empire, our anticipation of a killing is always scarier than the act itself.
The Sopranos actually plays on this essential truth of the genre with its famously polarizing cut-to-black ending. Yet, it’s Boardwalk Empire that describes the essence of what gangster stories do best, with a fictional Al Capone quote that could easily have been spoken by the real mobster himself.
- Release Date
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2010 – 2014-00-00
- Showrunner
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Terence Winter
- Directors
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Timothy Van Patten, Allen Coulter
This story originally appeared on Screenrant
