3 stars out of 5
It’s not bad and it’s not good. It certainly isn’t original. But I have to hand it to Gangster Squad, this is an entertaining movie. Not a bad way to spend a couple of hours, if you like guys in fedoras, guns, old-timey cars, and junk like that.
Gangster Squad wants very much to be L.A. Confidential. And to tell you the truth, even L.A. Confidential was a little too slick for my tastes. So this is another ultra-stylish west-coast gangster movie, but it never really feels legit. Kind of like they’re playing dress-up.
What the movie definitely has going for it is a strong cast. Josh Brolin was born to play a square-jawed lawman. Sean Penn has a lot of fun as the (real life, sorta) rage-filled boxer-turned-crime lord Mickey Cohen. Emma Stone is great as his moll; you can picture a drunken Lindsey Lohan watching this and saying “I coulda played that par—” right before passing out. Very nice to see The Killing star Mireille Enos, even if she’s done up as a dowdy pregnant housewife for 95% of her scenes, and the script makes her say “You’re a demon in the sack.” (That didn’t sound particularly 1949 to me.) For fans of the short-lived cable series Lights Out, you’ll appreciate Patrick “Lights” Leary as one of Sean Penn’s thugs. And Nick Nolte as the crusty police chief? But of course!
And then there’s Ryan Gosling. I know you ladies go cuckoo for young Ryan and his “Hey, Girl” memes. Sorry, he didn’t impress me here. It doesn’t help that his character is confusing. Is he a by-the-book, boy-scout sort of police officer? Or a jaded, just-getting-by cop… maybe with a dark side? On top of this, Gosling makes the very unfortunate choice of basically doing a whiny Mickey Doyle impression throughout the film. And… wait for it… he’s too skinny!
The B+ cast almost distracts you from the fact that there is nothing happening here that you haven’t seen a million times before. (Yes, I know it’s been a while since The Untouchables.) In order to wrest Los Angeles from Sean Penn’s sinister clutches, gruff cop Brolin forms a top-secret squad, each with their own specialty (the marksman! the genius! the street-smart black guy! A hispanic guy just for diversity’s sake!). Oh, and they were hand-picked by Brolin’s wife Mireille Enos. (See, she’s not just a dowdy pregnant Mrs. Elliot Ness.) No, Ryan Gosling, don’t fall for the crime boss’s girl! And it goes on like that.
Still, it never drags, you root for the good guys, and there are car chases, gun fights, fist fights, and did I mention Emma Stone. What, you wanted a really well-written, smartly directed movie? Forget it, Jake. It’s Chinatown.
Jack Silbert, curator