Gangster Squad

January 11, 2013

Jays Rating:
Actors: / / /

If you like violence and gunplay, you’ll enjoy the crime film inspired by true events titled, Gangster Squad. The time is 1949 and a gangster named Mickey Cohen (Sean Penn) makes an attempt to take over Los Angeles with drugs, gambling, and prostitution. Eventually, half of the police department is on the pay role of the mob, so police chief Parker (Nick Nolte) asks Sgt. John O’Mara (Josh Brolin) and Sgt. Jerry Wooters (Ryan Gosling) to create an “off the books” team of policeman to shut down the mob. Sgt. O’Mara recruits a sharpshooter, officer Max Kennare (Robert Patrick), a knife expert, officer Coleman Harris (Anthony Mackie), rookie officer Navidad Ramirez (Michael Pena), and electronic genius, officer Conway Keeler (Giovanni Ribisi). The Gangster Squad receives help from a woman named Grace Faraday (Emma Stone) who lives with Cohen’s and keeps the secret when they plant bugs in Cohen’s house. As the squad tightens the noose around the mob, Cohen becomes even more ruthless and brutal to the cops – and anybody who stands in the way of his plans to take over the East coast of the country. With such an all-stars cast, you would think this film would have at least a little emotional depth. Instead, we have people running around with Tommy guns shooting up the town yet not hitting anyone. (Even I could hit something with a machine gun.) This isn’t enough to make this is a bad movie, quite the contrary. Scenes have a fast pace and the cast does great with the script. (Okay, the script just said pull the trigger of your gun.) Near the end of the film, a cop thought his fists were a better choice than his gun and I thought if he’s killed he deserves it. But this is a paint by the numbers script, which means that would never happen. This is a cliché gangster film and I’m giving it a C+ rating.