Gangster Squad
The
Untouchables Part 2
Very,
very loosely inspired by a true story, in much the same way as a unicorn is
inspired by a horse, Zombieland director Ruben Fleischer’s Gangster Squad is a flashy, nostalgic, tommy
gun rat-a-tatting tale of rogue L.A. cops taking on a vicious, cartoon mobster
that plays like a Greatest Hits compilation of nostalgic rogue cop movies as it borrows
liberally from the likes of Mulholland Falls, L.A. Confidential and The Untouchables.
Los
Angeles, 1949: ruthless, psychotic New York gangster Mickey Cohen (Sean Penn) rules the City of Angels
with an iron fist, paying dirty cops and corrupt officials to look the other
way as he builds an empire founded on drugs, vice, prostitution and violence.
With
his hands legally tied and a police force on the take, Police Chief William
Parker (human/grizzly bear hybrid Nick Nolte) recruits a small team of honest cops to
challenge Cohen’s might. Led by
square-jawed WW2 veteran John O’Mara (Nick Nolte impersonator Josh Brolin) and laid-back pretty-boy
Jerry Wooters (Ryan Gosling), the Gangster Squad aren’t going to be making arrests;
they’re going to war, smashing Mickey’s operations, raiding his clubs and
casinos, destroying his drugs and money.
But Mickey’s not going down without a fight…
Written
by former L.A. homicide detective and novelist Will Beall (author of the ferocious L.A.
Rex), the
James Ellroy-flavoured Gangster Squad is brash, flash, B-movie fun that plays
so fast and loose with the facts that as you’re reading this defence attorneys
across Los Angeles are probably trying to overturn every conviction Beall ever
secured. But truth, like beauty,
is in the eye of the beholder; as Carleton Young’s jaded newsman tells James Stewart in John Ford’s classic Western The Man
Who Shot Liberty Valance: “This is the West, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the
legend.” And Gangster Squad is most definitely the legend
with its posse of gunslinging cops shooting it out with tommy gun-toting
gangsters on the streets of post-war L.A. while winning the hearts of dangerous
dames who look like Emma Stone.
The
performances for the most part are solid and fun. Josh Brolin tries, and fails, to out-gruff Nick Nolte
(just!) and their scenes together are a little like a David Attenborough nature documentary, two
irascible bears circling each other warily while Baby Goose is as effortlessly
cool as ever as the suave slacker cop Jerry Wooters. Anthony Mackie, Michael Pena and Giovanni Ribisi provide strong support in
their underwritten roles as, respectively, the black one, the Mexican one and
the doomed one while former T-1000 Robert Patrick shines as the grizzled old
gunslinger one. Mireille Enos is good in the clichéd role
of Brolin’s worried, heavily pregnant missus while Emma Stone was born to play a ‘40s
gangster moll. The role fits her
like the slinky evening gowns she wears as she rekindles the electric chemistry
she shared with Baby Goose in Crazy, Stupid, Love playing the femme fatale
Gosling’s cop falls for.
The
film’s biggest bum note however comes in the shape of a cartoonish,
scenery-chewing Sean Penn whose Mickey Cohen is a less subtle, less believable
version of Al Pacino’s Big Boy Caprice from 1990’s Dick Tracy. Hidden beneath prosthetics and spitting lines that would
embarrass Schwarzenegger, Penn’s panto villain is laughably evil, cackling
while ordering men burned alive, torn limb from limb or drilled to death. Which is a shame because while he was
undoubtedly a ruthless killer, the real Mickey Cohen was a charming, funny,
dapper, little gent loved by the newspapers (and L.A.’s scandal hungry public!)
who looked more like Danny De Vito than the troll Penn gives us.
But Gangster
Squad isn’t
about the real, it’s about the myth and Fleischer gives us a lurid, pulpy,
action-packed Hollywood myth of good cops and bad guys that’s far more
entertaining than it has a right to be.
David Watson
Directed by:
Written by:
Produced by:
Starring:
Ryan Gosling,
Josh Brolin,
Sean Penn, Giovanni Ribisi, Anthony Mackie,
Michael Peña,
Emma Stone, Nick Nolte
and Robert Patrick
Genres:
Crime, Drama
Language:
English
Runtime:
1 hour 53 minutes
Certificate:
15
Year
2012
UK Cinema Release Date:
Thursday 10th January 2013
Rating:
3/5
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