About The Movie:
Los Angeles, 1949. Ruthless, Brooklyn-born mob king Mickey Cohen
(Sean Penn) runs the show in this town, reaping the ill-gotten gains from the
drugs, the guns, the prostitutes and—if he has his way—every wire bet placed
west of Chicago. And he does it all with the protection of not only his own
paid goons, but also the police and the politicians who are under his control.
It's enough to intimidate even the bravest, street-hardened cop...except,
perhaps, for the small, secret crew of LAPD outsiders led by Sgt. John O'Mara
(Josh Brolin) and Jerry Wooters (Ryan Gosling), who come together to try to
tear Cohen's world apart. Gangster Squad is a colorful retelling of events
surrounding the LAPD's efforts to take back their nascent city from one of the
most dangerous mafia bosses of all time.
What Is Good/Bad About The Movie:
If you think you’ve heard this before, you have – the set-up is
almost identical to gangster movies like The Untouchables and even Dick Tracy.
Brolin’s O’Mara is a direct steal from Nick Nolte’s tough, uncompromising cop
in Mulholland Falls, which is one of the many, better, gangster movies that
“inform” Gangster Squad.
As if to emphasise this link, Nolte himself appears a few times as
the tough, uncompromising chief of police, using a voice so gravelly that he
sounds like he’s choking.
Sean Penn is convincing as Cohen, the tough, uncompromising gang
boss who wants to rule Los Angeles. His mean face is enhanced by a prosthetic
broken nose, and although his gravelly diction is not on par with Nolte’s, he
still sounds like he’s swallowing a bowl of driveway. He speaks only in
rhetorical devices: “A cop that’s not for sale is like a dog that’s got rabies
– you just gotta put em down.”
With all these tough, uncompromising types around, Ryan Gosling’s
character Jerry Wooters – a tough, somewhat compromised cop – is almost a
relief.
Gosling expands his dramatic range in this movie, showing that he’s
now able to express at least two or three different emotions, which is at least
one more than Brolin is allowed.
And he looks good in a double-breasted suit, which is some sort of
an achievement.
Unfortunately, the subplot he’s given is preposterous. Wooters is
having a long-term affair with the kingpin’s moll (played by Emma Stone,
channelling Jessica Rabbit) and we’re expected to believe that Cohen – a man
who has his enemies torn in half and eaten by coyotes – has overlooked the fact
that his girlfriend is enjoying regular breakfast dates with a policeman.
To be honest, this is a celebrity dress-up film, and director
Reuben Fleischer vividly indulges style over substance. It looks perfect: an
opportunity to fill the studio lot with Packards and Studebakers, and for the
wardrobe department to break out the three-piece suits, spats and fedoras.
Indeed, natty hats are such a key feature of this film that some
characters keep theirs on at all times, even when indoors in their own home.
Prolonged shoot-outs with machine guns are not enough to dislodge the
gangbusters’ headgear, and O’Mara even keeps his hat on when he’s blown across
the street by a car bomb.
But it seems that so much has been spent on wardrobe and other
details that the producers of Gangster Squad had to economise on the script.
The story has almost no dramatic tension – it seems little more
than a schedule to carry the main characters between gun fights, which are
presented in the style of MTV videos choreographed to period music pieces: wild
free jazz in one shoot-out scene, Copacabana swing in another.
Gangster Squad’s frequent borrowing from other gangster movies –
from Chinatown to Scarface to The Godfather – might be intended as homage, but
they end up as little more than window dressing in this fairly average, if
stylish, vigilante tale.
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