MOVIE REVIEW - Gangster Squad

An all-star cast is assembled for the new Gangster Squad.

This movie was supposed to be released in October, and be a serious Oscar contender.  Then this movie ran into real life and was delayed a few times, till finally its January release which takes it out of Oscar consideration for 2012.   More on that in a minute.

This is the story, based on a true events to a degree of the Gangland Wars in Los Angeles that began 1949.   An east coast mobster named Mickey Cohen (Sean Penn)  came to Southern California and started killing off other organized crime organizations.  His goal was to "own" L.A.,  controlling prostitution, gambling, drug trafficking, and all kinds of gaming.  His presence was called "enemy occupation" by the remaining L.A. police officers and government officials that still were not being paid off by Cohen.  Corruption was rampant, and the city was begin lost.

Police Chief Parker (Nick Nolte)  silently declares war on Cohen, and assembles an off-the-books small group of big men called the Gangster Squad.   Their job is to do whatever it takes to smash the whole Cohen operation.  It's all off the record, and led by a police Sgt.  John O'Mara (Josh Brolin).  He then recruits 5 others who basically turn in their badges and go after Cohen.  The cast also includes Ryan Gosling, Emma Stone, Giovanni Ribisi, Michael Pena, Anthony Mackie and Robert Patrick.

This was a very good idea for a movie. Part Untouchables (1987) , part L.A. Confidential (1997), and part new 21st century film making.  They put a great cast together, and there are some really good moments in this basically entertaining movie.   But Gangster Squad suffers from a few ails that are hard to overcome.  The writing is not very good at all, and there could have been far more character development, and a whole lot less shooting.   There is a whole lot of shooting in this movie.   In fact so much of it, it makes it all a bit cartoonish after a while, and that's a shame.   With a little more care, and the cast they assembled, this could have been really great.   Something tells me that the movie they set out to make, and the one they did make where two different things.

First off, this is not a bad movie at all.   I do think this is an underachieving movie.  The sets, costuming and acting by our principles are really great.   It's just written badly, and doesn't go near deep enough to be something special.   They do set the stage in 1949 L.A. wonderfully, and give this movie a terrific backdrop.   But this movie with all the sets, costumes, cast, fantastic music, and idea, sadly is shallow and spends way too much time avoiding the deep end of the pool.  With a real sell out to lengthy gun battle machine gun scenes by those on both sides being the worst shots in the world, and missing 1000's of times at short range.   It's a bit silly after a while.

Gangster Squad though does get a bit of a pass.  This movie was done and set to go, when the real-life Aurora, Colorado theater shootings took place.   The original script was for one of the centerpieces to be a gang-style theater shooting sequence.  Film makers had to rewrite most of this script, and call back all of the actors and re-shoot a whole bunch of this movie.  Much of the direction of this had to be changed.  Again, I don't think this was the movie they were hoping to make.

Gangster Squad.  It is a wonderful idea that looks great, sounds good, acted well, but is written poorly.  Should have been better.  This is not a wash-out, but not what it should have been.