Gangster Squad

Gangster Squad - Dir. Ruben Fleischer (2013)

In its heyday, Universal Studios was known for classic monster films like Dracula, Frankenstein, and The Wolf Man. On the other hand, Warner Brothers was renowned for violent gangster flicks that turned actors such as James Cagney and Edward G. Robinson into screen legends. Gangster Squad will hardly be ranked alongside Public Enemy, Little Caesar, or the original Scarface.

Gangster Squad is loosely based on a series of articles published by the L.A. Times and written by Paul Lieberman. "Tales from the Gangster Squad" was about a covert unit of the LAPD that waged war against organized crime. One of their primary targets was Mickey Cohen, a Jewish prizefighter who arrived on the west coast as hired muscle for Bugsy Siegel. The seedy underworld of Hollywood past was previously brought to life in L.A. Confidential. Indeed, Gangster Squad borrows heavily from the works of James Ellroy and The Untouchables.

Mickey Cohen (Sean Penn) has brutally risen through the criminal underworld to control all of the drugs, gambling, and prostitution in Los Angeles. Corruption throughout the LAPD and local government has enabled Cohen's operations. The embattled Chief of Police Bill Parker (Nick Nolte) tasks Sgt. John O'Mara (Josh Brolin), a decorated WWII veteran, with assembling his own task force to combat Cohen. They are given carte blanche to dismantle Cohen's empire without the need for warrants or arrests. The roster for O'Mara's squad includes: Sgt. Jerry Wooters (Ryan Gosling), a suave ladies' man; Coleman Harris (Anthony Mackie), a black beat cop with a mastery of the switchblade; surveillance expert Conwell Keeler (Giovanni Ribisi); Max Kennard (Robert Patrick), a mustachioed gunslinger; and earnest rookie Navidad Ramirez (Michael Pena). Things are complicated when Wooters romances Cohen's girlfriend and etiquette tutor, Grace Faraday (Emma Stone).

Gangster Squad is a visually stunning picture. Production designer Maher Ahmad has faithfully recreated a bygone era of Los Angeles full of fedoras, trenchcoats, sporty roadsters, and Tommy guns. It's all exquisitely lit with an accentuated color palette thanks to cinematographer Dion Beebe. Director Ruben Fleischer made a stylish debut with Zombieland and continues his trend for energetic action sequences with plenty of shootouts, explosions, chaotic brawls, and a car chase where potato masher grenades are lobbed about. One of the best staged scenes involves the squad breaking into Cohen's nightclub to burn his dirty money while Carmen Miranda sings on stage. One scene that didn't make the cut featured gangsters opening fire on a packed audience inside Grauman's Chinese Theater. The movie was delayed from its original September release following the tragedy in Aurora and the sequence was replaced with a shootout in Chinatown, which was no less bloody. Make no mistake; Gangster Squad is a violent film. Bodies are riddled with bullets, a trio of goons is burned alive, innocent bystanders routinely die, and one man is ripped in half after being tied to two cars.

Fleischer isn't afraid to reference other films in an obvious manner. The movie opens with Penn's Cohen quoting Bela Lugosi in Dracula. Later, a character is shot and falls face first into a swimming pool ala Sunset Boulevard. Fleischer even throws in a staircase gunfight during the climax as a nod to The Untouchables recreation of the Odessa Steps from Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin. Anthony Mackie flings his knife in a similar fashion to James Coburn in The Magnificent Seven. While Untouchables and Magnificent Seven were certainly an influence, there's also a heavy dose of Dick Tracy throughout Gangster Squad. Josh Brolin's square-jawed hero looks an awful lot like Chester Gould's iconic detective with the humorless stoicism of Joe Friday from Dragnet. Then, there's Sean Penn who bears no resemblance to the real Cohen and appears to have stepped right out of a comic strip. The make-up work turns him into a caricature and Penn plays it accordingly. He's a snarling beast chewing through every scene. Penn gets his Cagney moment when he shouts, "Here comes Santy Claus," while latching onto a Tommy gun during a Christmas shootout.

The hammy acting and relentless violence distracts from the fact that the hackneyed plot. The screenplay by Will Beall, a former LAPD officer, is rife with clichés and one-dimensional characters. Brolin's O'Mara is one of the worst leaders in cinematic history. As Wooters states, "You're a bull in a China shop, Sarge, but we follow you in anyways." That doesn't say much for O'Mara or his charges. He blindly leaps into the fray and can definitely be blamed for much of the film's collateral damage. In a nice twist, it is O'Mara's wife (Mireille Enos) who selects the members of his squad though she's never given more to do other than worry about her husband. The squad themselves aren't given any distinct personalities. Meanwhile, Gosling is so laidback cool that it almost borders on self-parody, especially when he's effortlessly flicking his Zippo lighter. He has some great scenes with Emma Stone who might as well be Jessica Rabbit's younger, slinkier sister.

Gangster Squad is a pure exercise in style over substance. This is L.A. Confidential dumbed down and turned into an R-rated, live-action cartoon.

Rating: ** ½ (*****)

Battleship

Battleship - Dir. Peter Berg (2012)

The idea of adapting a board game into a movie isn't unprecedented. In 1985, Paramount turned Clue into a comedic mystery that cleverly used multiple endings. While it did poorly at the box office, Clue has built up a cult audience due to home video and cable TV airings. Still, it seems like the studios are running short of ideas if they're turning to old board games for concepts. Monopoly is in development, Adam Sandler is attached to produce and star in Candyland, and Universal wants to turn Ouija into a low-budget horror film ala Paranormal Activity. I suppose it's only a matter of time before they make Hungry Hungry Hippos as a white knuckle jungle adventure or Operation as a gripping hospital drama. Until Connect Four: The Movie hits theaters nationwide, Universal and Hasbro have teamed up bring us Battleship.

Taylor Kitsch, in his second blockbuster of the year, stars as Alex Hopper, a professional screw-up, who gets in trouble with the law after breaking into a convenience store for a frozen chicken burrito. Why in the world would he do that? To impress the lovely Brooklyn Decker, who plays a physical therapist named Samantha Shane, the daughter of a stern Admiral (Liam Neeson) in the U.S. Navy. Admiral Shane also happens to be the commanding officer of Alex's older brother, Stone (Alexander Skarsgard). Stone forces his younger sibling to enlist in the Navy in the hopes they will straighten him out.

Years pass and the Hopper Brothers are stationed off the coast of Hawaii where they are to participate in a war games exercise with a Japanese fleet. The simulation turns deathly real with the arrival of alien scout ships that have followed NASA transmissions back to Earth. The extraterrestrial invaders sink two ships and erect an impenetrable force field around a section of the sea. Only the USS John Paul Jones is left with Alex assuming command as all other senior officers have been killed. Meanwhile, another squad of aliens is building a communications array on the mainland to contact their home planet. The only humans able to stop them are a nerdy NASA scientist (Hamish Linklater), Samantha, and one of her patients, Lt. Col. Canales, played by war vet and real-life amputee Gregory D. Gadson.

"From the studio that brought you Transformers," has been utilized prominently in the film's marketing campaign. The phrase is fitting because Battleship seems to have sprung from the mind of Michael Bay. Every aspect of Battleship has a Bay-esque feel to it, from the production design to the sound effects. The filmmakers even brought on Steve Jablonsky, who scored the Transformers series, to score Battleship. The aliens' spacecraft and weaponry look like they were bought from a Decepticon garage sale. Director Peter Berg shoots his action sequences with the same frenzied, kinetic pace as Bay. Scenes of massive urban destruction appear to have been pulled directly from Armageddon. At least, Battleship isn't replete with the misogyny and racial stereotypes generally found in Bay productions. The script by Erich & Jon Hoeber (who also wrote Whiteout and Red) is riddled with plot holes, a leaky vessel to use nautical parlance. The aliens knock out the Navy's communications and radar with an electromagnetic pulse, yet the crew still has access to digital monitors and other electronic devices. The screenplay isn't subtle either as it constantly hammers home how Alex is full of wasted potential.

The main reason to knock out the radar is to allow the filmmakers to incorporate the hit-and-miss strategy of the original game. The crew of the John Paul Jones utilizes buoys to create a grid in order to detect where the enemy ships are. The aliens also use missiles made to look like the game pegs. Sadly, no one utters the catchphrase, "You sunk my battleship." Though one character does say, "No one's gonna sink this battleship." The aliens themselves are pulled off in an interesting manner. They are humanoid with a convenient weakness, but have clear rules of engagement

Kitsch isn't as leaden here as he was in John Carter, maybe because he's able to play it a little looser. Still, you can't help but wonder how the film would have unfolded had Alexander Skarsgard been cast in the lead. Fans of Friday Night Lights will be pleased to see Kitsch reunited with former castmate Jesse Plemons as the requisite comic relief sidekick, a role also taken by Hamish Linklater. Pop sensation Rihanna makes her acting debut as a scrappy weapons specialist, a role usually reserved for Michelle Rodriguez. She does fine in the limited role and gets one of the movie's best lines ("Mahalo, motherfucker.") Meanwhile, Liam Neeson is wasted in a throwaway part though I'm sure he got a nice, fat paycheck.

Battleship is everything audiences have come to expect from a summer blockbuster: loud, dumb, and full of expensive special effects. Taken on that level, it may be enjoyable to those looking for simple, escapist fun.

Rating: ** (*****)