There seems to be little doubt that Ruben Fleischer, the director behind the well-received Zombieland and the less well-received 30 Minutes or Less, is a Brian De Palma fan. How else to explain the kinship that exists between Fleischer’s latest, Gangster Squad, and De Palma’s classic The Untouchables (with a little Scarface thrown in for good measure)? The similarities go beyond the requisite plot points that exist in all gangland stories; Gangster Squad unspools almost like a remake of The Untouchables, albeit with a souped-up ending and a relocation from Prohibition Era Chicago to post-WWII Los Angeles. There’s no Battleship Potemkin homage, but there is a nod to Sunset Blvd. Gangster Squad is an unashamedly pulpy thriller that borders at times on an exploitation flick but its determination to follow The Untouchables’ template (without the benefit of a David Mamet script) makes it a little too predictable to be memorable. Download Gangster Squad Steeped in blood, gore, and violence, Gangster Squad delivers what fans of the gangster genre expect from a movie of this sort. It’s chock-full of “guilty pleasure” moments. Sean Penn, playing real-life mobster Mickey Cohen, hams it up expertly, channeling Al Pacino’s Tony Montana without the accent. The good guys are stolid, sturdy men – paragons of virtue up against a feral villain who is so vile that even the notorious Chicago mob can’t stand against him. Despite the talent of the cast, Gangster Squad isn’t a “prestige” motion picture and its release date shift from September 7 to January 11 didn’t damage its nonexistent Oscar chances. It’s an inferior Untouchables knock-off and proud of it. The year is 1949. Mickey Cohen is building his underworld empire in the alleys and bordellos of post-war L.A. Half the police force is in his pocket. He owns the dope and sex trades and has a plan that will give him control over all the illicit money funneling into the West. Mickey doesn’t think small and he calls himself Progress. Standing in his way is the “Gangster Squad” – a group of six dedicated lawmen who work under the radar to bring down Cohen’s empire by any and all means possible. Sgt. John O’Mara (Josh Brolin) gets the commission from Chief Parker (Nick Nolte) after he proves himself to be incorruptible. He hand-picks his cohorts: fellow war veteran Jerry Wooters (Ryan Gosling); a cop with a dim view of authority, Coleman Harris (Anthony Mackie); a sharpshooter, Max Kennard (Robert Patrick) and his sidekick, Navidad Ramirez (Michael Pena); and a wiretapper, Conway Keeler (Giovanni Ribisi). Download Gangster Squad The Gangster Squad gets off to a rough start, with two of its members stuck behind bars (leading to a cartoonish jailbreak). But, once they plant a bug in Mickey’s demesne, things take a turn for the better. Their many successes are conveyed via a montage replete with newspaper headlines. Eventually, Mickey decides he can no longer afford to absorb the losses he is taking and decides to take the fight to his enemies. The results are predictably bloody, although no one brings a knife to a gunfight. Like The Untouchables, Gangster Squad plays fast and loose with history. The real Mickey Cohen, like Al Capone, ended up running afoul of the tax code. That’s wasn’t dramatic enough for Fleischer, who invents a more cinematically appealing climax that includes the staple of testosterone-drenched movies: the fist fight. There’s also a car chase but, perhaps because it features ’40s vehicles, it feels more energetic than the generic version of this sort of thing. The cast is upscale, with a two-time Oscar winner (Penn) and three Oscar nominees (Nolte, Gosling, Brolin) leading a group that includes one of the hottest young actresses currently working in Holywood (Emma Stone). This isn’t really an actor’s movie, however, so it gives the performers an opportunity to have some fun. Penn and Nolte get to do a little scenery chewing and Brolin flexes some muscle. It’s not a great part for Emma Stone, who looks terrific in the period costumes but, as the woman caught between Cohen and Wooters, her thinly drawn character often looks like a deer caught in headlights. Gangster Squad will remind everyone of The Untouchables but suffers greatly by the comparison. That’s a little unfortunate because, taken on its own terms, it offers its share of lowbrow entertainment. Like any genre film, all Gangster Squad has to do is generate a little box office noise to fulfill expectations. Entering multiplexes in the icy wasteland that is early January, Gangster Squad provides a welcome burst of heat and color, even if those qualities are more illusory than real and subject to a fast fade. Director Ruben Fleischer’s Zombieland was a riot, with plenty of fun in its fantasy premise of a group left fending for its survival against a zombie apocalypse, but gets all serious here with his treatment of Gangster Squad, set in the 40s post WWII Los Angeles where its riddled with crime and corruption, with gangsters owning every turf and calling the shots in the running of the city. A few good men get rounded up by a common ideal to take back their city, starting with getting rid of head gangster Mickey Cohen (Sean Penn). By the time this film runs into its 30 minute mark, you’d see all the shades of Brian De Palma’s Untouchables, where instead of Capone, we have Cohen, who got introduced to audiences in a more sadistic fashion, making De Niro’s scene with the baseball bat look like a stroll in the park, setting the violent tone that’s to pepper the film at every opportunity. And given today’s standards, who would blame Fleischer in making this ultra-bloody, especially when it boils down to fisticuffs and the bloodying of any pummeling to the face, and expending plenty of lead through vintage machine guns, which pushed back the film’s release after the infamous Aurora, Colorado massacre which required scenes to be reshot. Then we have Josh Brolin as Sgt John O’Mara, given the green light by weary police chief Parker (Nick Nolte) to go under the radar and assemble a crack team of his own to use any means possible to wrest control from Cohen, and cripple the gangster’s operations, with a Mission: Impossible styled disavowing hanging over their heads should any of them be caught. If this doesn’t sound like Elliot Ness gathering his troops, I don’t know what is. Dogged by an inherent sense of righteousness and honour, O’Mara assembles the titular crack squad consisting of marksman Max Kennard (Robert Patrick hidden behind thick makeup), his unofficial understudy tag-along Navidad Ramirez (Michael Pena), intelligence Conway Keeler (Giovanni Ribisi), Coleman Harris (Anthony Mackie) with throwing knife skills that got severely underused, and then the Romeo of the lot Sgt Jerry Wooters, whose romance with Cohen’s moll Grace Faraday (Emma Stone, literally a flower vase role) brought about an edge to the team. And just like the Untouchables, with its stylish art direction and production values to recreate the aura and romanticism of its early American era, the drama unfortunately centers around a handful of its leads, without giving much of the other supporting characters screen time to get to know them beyond their single-ability that brought them to the fight. And even then we don’t get beyond O’Mara’s sense of duty, Wooters’ rather maverick ways and romance with Grace that didn’t threaten the dynamics of the group nor put him very dangerously close to Cohen’s gun-sights. This film could have been a lot more with deeper character study since we have five very different kinds of cops each with their own personal agenda brought to the table, but we get none. This instead got traded for its stunning visuals, a combination of slow-motion, stylized action sequences ranging from montages of raids the Gangster Squad undertakes to close Cohen’s various operations, to personal one on one fisticuffs, since Cohen is after all, a mobster who got to where he is through sheer professional boxing prowess and experience. Camera-work, CGed or otherwise, also made quite an impact with its fluid motions to capture the crux of any situation. There’s little to wow on the narrative side of things, since plot development moved in very expected fashion. Probably the sole interesting peak would be how O’Mara’s wife Connie (Mireille Enos) got involved in handpicking the Gangster Squad, which boiled down to a pragmatic, selfish and very valid real life reason of keeping her husband alive in a job known to attract Trouble, and surrounding him with people blessed with the necessary skillset to get their mission accomplished.
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