Gangster Squad

When you pick actors as good as all of these that were picked here, no matter the decency of the movie, you get a winning formula. I like mob stories, mafia movies and crime thrillers, so this was a match made in heaven for me. Both the protagonists and the antagonist were acting amazing, the story was pretty decent, the action was great, the style of the movie was retro and original at the same time. I think that this movie deserves at least a 7/10.

In 1949, gangster Mickey Cohen (Sean Penn) is taking over L.A. from the Chicago mob. Sgt. John O'Mara (Josh Brolin) is leading a squad to destroy his organization by any means necessary. Grace Faraday (Emma Stone) is Mickey's girl, and she falls for the charming Sgt. Jerry Wooters (Ryan Gosling).

There is no subtlety in this movie. It's just style, violence, and 2-dimensional acting. The style is over the top. So it the violence. And the acting is as cartoonish as a comic book. The story is a straight forward shootout. This is not the 'The Untouchables'. It is more like a comic book version. That's part of its charm. It doesn't matter that the characters are simplistic. It just matters that they shoot a lot.

Gangster Squad is entertaining as hell. It's also a total mess. Seriously, it's like watching a live-action cartoon with an A-list cast trying so hard to make this dialogue credible, but there's nothing they can do. It's a cartoon. Over the top, hammy dialogue, crazy shootouts with no consequence. If you don't shut your brain off within the first 20 minutes of this movie then you're doing something wrong. It's a shame because the plot is based off of the real life gangster Mickey Cohen who was the ruler of LA for a time, and the source material has endless potential. But the faster you can accept that that's not the kind of movie this is, the quicker you can appreciate it for its camp value.

Some things that stand out are Sean Penn's ridiculously over the top performance. Not that you can fault him for it. The part is written as a stereotypical gangster with temper issues and the script throws him these cheesy one-liners that wouldn't sound authentic coming from anyone's mouth. But to his credit, he's fun to watch. As is Brolin who plays the leader of the squad, and probably the most "human" character of them all. And there's Ryan Gosling is doing a really weird but oddly fitting voice for this time period with his natural charismatic charm. The supporting cast is good as well but they practically nothing to do. There's no pathos anywhere - it's all overblown bombast, and if you're okay with that, then I think you'll get a kick out of Gangster Squad.

If you're expecting LA Confidential 2, stay the hell away.

Gangster Squad is directed by Ruben Fleischer and written by Will Beal. It stars Josh Brolin, Sean Penn, Ryan Gosling, Emma Stone, Nick Nolte, Anthony Mackie, Giovanni Ribisi, Robert Patrick and Michael Pena. Music is by Steve Jablonski and cinematography by Dion Beebee.

Los Angeles is being brought to its knees by crime boss Mickey Cohen (Penn). In one of the darkened offices of the police department, a special squad of officers is being assembled. Given free licence to bring Cohen and his operations down by any means necessary, the Gangster Squad fight fir with fire.

Loosely based on real life facts, Gangster Squad is a good old slice of machine gun etiquette. An all star cast get to play good guys and wise guys in The Untouchables tradition, even if that in itself can't quite lift the film to the higher echelons of gangster movies past and present.

There's absolutely nothing new here, it plays out as expected. Brolin and Gosling are the main smooth operators in the good guys camp, the former given the family man in danger sub-plot, the latter given the dangerous dame to fall in love with in the shapely form of Emma Stone, who as it happens is also dating Cohen! Hmm...

Over in the wise guys department is Penn on full tilt sweary and hammy overdrive. It's a very colourful portrayal, menacing and completely over the top. How the performance sits with you will greatly depend on how you find Penn as an actor when let loose on a cartoon characterisation.

It's all very period pleasing, with a bustling late 40s L.A. hosting men with hats, trench coats and tommy-guns. Men who frequent the speakeasy bars as torch singers warble their stuff. There is nothing wrong with the production at all, except maybe when the dialogue veers to clunky. The action scenes are well crafted, loud, bloody and exciting, and the photography sparkles and the music soars.

If only the makers had put some thought into it, a bit of brains to go with the brawn. As a comic book type gangster piece, it works well on entertainment terms, elsewhere its lightweight and formula compliant, with the Ribisi, Patrick and Pena characters telegraphed a mile away. So, quite some way away from the great The Untouchables then, but better than Mullholland Falls. Make of that what you will. 6.5/10

Originally intended for release in September of 2012, Gangster Squad has belatedly hit theatres this week. The film follows the story of LA crime boss Mickey Cohen and a group of off-the-book beat cops to bring him down. "Based" on a true story (What movie isn't these days?) the film and its fantastic cast promise much but come across as bland and boring.

Set in Los Angeles in the 50's, Mickey Cohen (Sean Penn) is a crime lord who has taken over and there seems to be nobody who can stop him. The few good cops are outnumbered by the cops Cohen has bought and it seems all hope is lost. But Police Chief Nick Nolte decides something needs to be done and assigns good, hard cop Josh Brolin to put together a team to go after Cohen. What follows is the assembling of a team of not-so- perfect cops and the war they wage on Cohen's empire.

Sound familiar? That's because we've all already seen this movie, only done much better. You can tick the cliché's off as you watch. Good cop being grilled by his dirty cop superior? Check. Older tougher cop and his young protégé? Check. Evil henchman of the chief bad guy? Check. The list could go on but would approach spoiler territory. The climax of the film is somewhat predictable about half way through. You can foresee almost all of the events that will play out in the last 20 minutes and while it's enjoyable enough, it's nothing you haven't seen before.

The cast is a who's who list of names. Which makes the film all the more disappointing. With names like Brolin, Gosling, Penn and Stone they should blow you away. But the characters are nothing more than caricatures and nobody gets the chance to portray any real depth, with the possible exception of Giovanni Ribsi. Sean Penn looks bizarre in a mountain of makeup, although it matches his completely over the top performance. Ryan Gosling turns in a nicely subtle performance, but most of the rest of the cast are stuck in cardboard cut out roles with individual stories set on railway tracks. We all know where they're going to go, we just have to wait for them to get there.

Also worth mentioning in the reason for the delay in the film's release. Originally the film was to be released in September 2012, but then the Aurora shooting took place. At that time one of the key set pieces of the film was a scene in which the characters shoot at people from behind a movie screen in a theatre. Realising how disastrously that would be received in the wake of Aurora, the studio immediately suspended promotion for the film and set about reworking that scene. The cast re- assembled in August to reshoot the sequence, now taking place in Chinatown.

Something I liked: Robert Patrick's performance as the grizzled older gunslinger. As a Terminator 2 fan it was great to see him still taking out people almost at will.

Something I didn't like: The predictable climax. At the 60 minute mark I mentally made a list of things I thought would happen in the last 20 or so minutes of the film. Of my list of about 6 things, 5 of them happened exactly as I predicted.

Something that bugged me: The scenes with Josh Brolin and Nick Nolte seemed to be shot out of focus. It was particularly noticeable in the shots of Nolte. For a film with a budget of $75M, this just shouldn't happen.

Summary: Ultimately Gangster Squad is an enjoyable enough 100 minutes but isn't anything significant. There's no great performances, no spectacular set pieces nor any big moments that you'll go home talking about. For the ladies there's an ample amount of eye candy in the form of a suited and fedora-d Ryan Gosling, and for the gentlemen there's Emma Stone and a no-nonsense Robert Patrick. But the story fails to ever really leap off the page and become something. We're told Mickey Cohen is bad, but he's never anything more than "that bad guy". We don't hate him, we don't sympathise with him or desperately want him to be taken down. He's just "the bad guy". The same can be said for all of the characters, and the story as a whole. Which makes it on the whole, ultimately forgettable.