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 (*****)
