Gangster Squad

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.

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.

Brilliantly and stylishly recreated story set in Los Angeles, 1949: A secret crew of police officers led by a determined sergeant (Josh Brolin) pull off a hard fight against a local mobster . As sergeant John O'Mara happily married to pregnant Connie O'Mara (Mireille Enos , though Amy Adams and Kate Winslet were considered to play her) is assigned by Chief W.H. Parker (Nick Nolte, who portrays , previously played the leader of the gangster squad in Mulholland Falls) to enlist a brave group (Jamie Foxx and Bryan Cranston were considered for the roles but dropped out due to scheduling conflicts with their other movies) . As they work together in an effort to take down the ruthless mob king Mickey Cohen (Sean Penn) who runs the city . O'Mara chooses 4 officers (Robert Patrick , Anthony McKee , Giovanni Rivisi , Michael Peña) and asks another cop and vet, Jerry Wooters (Ryan Gosling , though Adam Brody, Joel Edgerton, Luke Evans and Joseph Gordon-Levitt were on the short list for the part) to join him but he is not interested , but when he witnesses a killing , he joins them . Then , Wooters falls in love for Mickey Cohen's girlfriend called Grace Faraday (Emma Stone , though Teresa Palmer, Camilla Belle, Aly Michalka, Lily Collins, Emmy Rossum, Amanda Seyfried and Maggie Grace auditioned for this character)

This is a violence-ridden story full of action, drama , thriller and being pretty entertaining . Intelligent and suspenseful script in ¨The Untouchables¨ style , being written by Will Beall based on the book "Gangster Squad" from Paul Lieberman . Spectacular as well as explosive shoot'em up on the streets , mansion , station and Chinatown . Josh Brolin is excellent as impulsive and obstinate enforcer fighting against the underworld crime . Robert Patrick plays to perfection a veteran, incorruptible police who takes under his experience and protection to Michael Peña . And Sean Penn overacting in a heinous role as the nasty Mickey Cohen , Penn went through 3 hours of makeup each morning . Flamboyant and rich photography by Dion Beebe . Thrilling as well as atmospheric musical score by Steve Jablonsky . The motion picture was beautifully directed by Ruben Fleischer . This superb recounting will appeal immensely to Josh Brolin , Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone fans.

The flick was partially based on real events : In the movie, the Gangster Squad is assembled to go after Mickey Cohen. However, in real life Chief W.H. Parker set up the squad to prevent other gangsters from taking over Cohen's rackets after Cohen went to prison on income tax evasion. Whenever the squad learned that out-of-town gangsters were coming to Los Angeles to try to set up new operations, the Gangster Squad would kidnap them, beat them up and then send them back to wherever they came from with the warning that if they ever returned, they would be killed . Other films dealing with this famous gangster Mickey Cohen are the followings : Bugsy (1991) played by Harvey Keitel , Fallen Angels (1993) played by James Woods , The Rat Pack (1998) (TV) played by Alan Woolf , L.A. Confidential (1997) played by Paul Guilfoyle , and recent TV series Mob City (2013) played by Jeremy Luke , including similar characters to 'The gangster squad' being starred by Jon Bernthal , Milo Ventimiglia, Neal McDonough , Alexa Davalos , Jeffrey DeMunn and Robert Knepper.

Glossy, slick, bloody, violent, dumb, crowd-pleasing, and undeniably entertaining. Filled with every gangster genre cliché rolled into one, GANGSTER SQUAD ain't high art, nor is it aiming to be. It seemed as if director Fleischer was trying to tell this story in the most fun possible way, and he succeeds with flying colors. The film is at its best when its loud and dumb but falters when it tries to be anything more than that.

The cast seems like they're having fun, especially Sean Penn who has a field day with his role as the villain Mickey Cohen. The lines he's given are pure gold. Josh Brolin does a great job as the lead and Ryan Gosling is charming and charismatic as usual. However, Emma Stone is underused with a thankless role, but it's nice that she's in the film anyway. Overall, GANGSTER SQUAD is fun entertainment. No judgments, little pretense.

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.