24 January 2013
Directed by: Ruben Fleischer
Starring: Ryan Gosling, Sean Penn, Josh Brolin, Emma Stone and Nick Nolte
What It’s About: A group of cops work outside the law to end Mickey Cohen’s control of Los Angeles.
Rated R (for strong violence and language)
By Desmond Ho, Staff Writer
On the surface, Gangster Squad looks like it has a lot going for it. It features an all-star cast, a solid director (Ruben Fleischer, of Zombieland fame) and a good amount of action. With all this, one would wonder how such a movie can be anything but awesome, but, well, it’s not.
Gangster Squad is set in 1948 Los Angeles, home to the ruthless gangster Mickey Cohen (Sean Penn). He controls the courts through bribery and murder, rendering the police powerless to stop him. LAPD Chief Bill Parker (Nick Nolte) decides to put a stop to this and creates a special unit of officers to work outside the law. He puts Sergeant John O’Mara (Josh Brolin) in charge of recruiting the team, which eventually consists of: the womanizing Sgt. Jerry Wooters (Ryan Gosling), the streetwise Coleman Harris (Anthony Mackie), the tech-savvy Conwell Keeler (Giovanni Ribisi), dead-shot gunman Max Kennard (Robert Patrick) and Kennard’s partner Navidad Ramirez (Michael Peña). Wooters is initially cynical about the operation, until Cohen inadvertently makes it personal. Wooters also starts romancing Cohen’s girlfriend, Grace Faraday (Emma Stone), unbeknownst to Cohen.
Gosling and Stone both previously starred in the critically praised rom-com Crazy, Stupid, Love, which makes it all the more baffling how little chemistry they have here, not to mention their corny dialogue. Faraday is a pointless character, save for a contrived scene near the end. Their romance isn’t really fleshed out, and the film doesn’t do a good job of making the audience care about them. The exact same can be said for most of the characters; they’re all one-dimensional, and you don’t really care about their fates by the end of the film.
Fleischer’s comedy styling comes into play for some scenes. The film can be mildly entertaining at times, but only at its best. There are a lot of interesting directions the movie could have taken plot-wise, but instead it opted for popcorn high-action sequences. Questions about moral ambiguity are mentioned once, but are quickly dropped and never brought up again. It’s fine popcorn at times, but it’s just popcorn.
It’s certainly a stylish movie as far as set pieces go. Visually, I found that the film looked like a really good videogame cutscene at times (think L.A. Noire). Sean Penn’s prosthetics weren’t as distracting as I thought they’d be, and he gives an over-the-top hammy performance as Mickey Cohen. His chewing of the scenery makes for a few unintentional laughs. The rest of the performances are decent as well, but again, they’re all playing one-note characters.
Gangster Squad is predictable and clichéd, albeit somewhat entertaining. At best, it’s passable entertainment; the filmmakers clearly went for style over substance. As it stands, Gangster Squad is a disappointment.
5/10
Courtesy of blogs.artinfo.com