For the record, it's English. I was born in Tilbury, Essex, made temporarily 
American citizen?"
“We’re not solving a case here,” claims Sgt. John O’Mara (Josh Brolin) of the LAPD, “We’re going to war.”
Loosely based on a true story, though seemingly inspired by other movies more than anything else, Gangster Squad tells of how a small band of street-wise cops – a kind of unofficial
West Coast version of The Untouchables – worked together to bring down a psychotic hoodlum. “I want you to wage guerrilla war against Mickey Cohen,” orders Police Chief Bill
Parker (an alarmingly gruff Nick Nolte). “This is a war for the soul of
Mickey Cohen, played with snake-eyed relish by Sean Penn under heavy makeup, was a brutal, real-life gangster with ties to both the Jewish Mafia and the American Mafia. He
died in his sleep in 1976. Hollywood is often criticized for romanticizing such characters – in real-life, Cohen is said to have had a lot of charm and schmoozed his way into the hearts and minds of lawyers, judges and Hollywood celebrities – but the film shows him in one vein; a perpetually angry killer. The way he’s portrayed in Gangster Squad you’d think that the only reason Cohen had any influence over anyone was by sheer, brute force, much of which I’m sure is true, but by ignoring the other and important aspect of the man’s character – he even met with Billy Graham and considered himself to be a Christian gangster – the film shows itself to be interested in being nothing other than a simple, one-note, machine-gun thriller, and it’s all over the place.
The setting is 1949
spirit of the time in both its design and its story-telling technique, Gangster Squad succeeds in getting only the visuals correct. The explicit brutality shown throughout is very much of a present-day nature, and it’s ugly to the point of being disturbing. In the opening moments we’re witness to a man being ripped in half, torn apart by two vehicles pulling in opposite directions. The suggestion of what was going to happen to him would have played effective enough, but then the film actually shows it. Later, Cohen orders the murder of another victim by a drill. The film shows blood and other pieces of flesh splatter against a window, then cuts to a backyard barbeque scene where a lump of raw meat is slapped on a hot griddle. It’s neither funny nor effective; in this context it's simply cinematic sadism.
There’s an element of satisfaction when seeing the tough cops actually succeed in bringing the gangster down, and actors like Brolin and Penn are eminently watchable. In a small role, Mireille Enos is particularly effective as Brolin’s wife, Connie. “He can have the whole lousy town,” she tells her husband when discussing Cohen, “He just can’t have you.” But Emma Stone as the gangster’s moll and Ryan Gosling as an all too casual police sergeant have no spark together. Part of the problem is that the characters seem underwritten, the other is that both actors appear too young and look more like college kids playing period dress-up than anything resembling real people. Like the film itself, they’re nicely decorated but fail to convince.
MPAA Rating: R Length: 110 minutes Overall Rating: 6 (out of 10)
