Movie Review: Gangster Squad (2013)
Written by Anthony Sargon
On paper, "Gangster Squad" has all the potential to be great. It has a distinguished cast, director Ruben Fleischer has a solid track record, and its film noir aesthetic is appealing. While the movie manages to get more right than it does wrong, it ultimately doesn't live up to its full potential.
It's 1949, and the city of Los Angeles is under the rule of Mickey Cohen (Sean Penn), a ruthless mob king. He owns almost every lawman and politician in the city, and he can get away with pretty much anything. Not every cop in L.A. is crooked though, and Sgt. John O'Mara (Josh Brolin) is one of those cops. He's assigned by his equally virtuous police chief (Nick Nolte) to form a secret squad of officers whose sole purpose is to dismantle Cohen's operation. There's also a love affair between Sgt. Jerry Wooters (Ryan Gosling) with Cohen's squeeze, Grace Faraday (Emma Stone). Sgt. O'Mara ends up recruiting Sgt. Wooters, as well as detectives Max Kennard (Robert Patrick), Navidad Ramirez (Michael Peña), Coleman Harris (Anthony Mackie), and Conway Keeler (Giovanni Ribisi).
"Gangster Squad" is a very stylish film; bullets fly around in slow motion, blood splatters everywhere, and the production values are generally top-notch. The problem mainly lies with a script that plays it extremely safe. The dialogue doesn't have much depth, so characters are one-dimensional, and we only get to know them on a surface level. The movie could have been a dark crime drama, but it ends up being a straight-forward action movie. There's nothing wrong with that, but you expect more when there's such a stellar cast.
The movie definitely benefits from some great performances, and they help lend it some credibility. Sean Penn looks like he's having a blast playing Mickey Cohen, and Josh Brolin further establishes himself as a strong leading man. Emma Stone is as great as usual, and Ryan Gosling delivers a very charismatic performance.
The action is slick, and the film is pretty violent, but it's nothing we haven't grown accustomed to. There are plenty of shootouts and fistfights, and Fleischer's direction is akin to Zack Snyder's when it comes to the use of slow motion and the film's very graphic-novel inspired feel.
Anthony's Verdict:
"Gangster Squad" is a stylish and entertaining action flick, but its lacking script keeps it from being better than O.K.
Numerical Score: 6.5/10
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