Gangster Squad

Mickey Cohen is one gangster who is no stranger to Hollywood.  After being a supporting figure in many successful films, from Warren Beatty’s Oscar winning Bugsy, to Curtis Hanson’s Oscar winning L.A. Confidential, he is finally given a film all his own with Gangster Squad, a curious, yet altogether pointless bit of gangster porn saddled with a January release that is notable more for what it rips off from other films, than for what it achieves on its own.  It’s late 1940’s Hollywood, and the town is succumbing to the influence of Chicago gangster Cohen, and his quickly growing illegal empire, which remains unchallenged in the new west by any of his rivals.  The city is getting desperate, as is police chief Parker (Nick Nolte), who after many unsuccessful attempts to capture Cohen inside the law, decides to form a clandestine group of police officers to go after him outside the law, because that’s how you get Capone, he brings a knife and you bring a gu—oops, sorry, wrong film.

To say Gangster Squad owes much to Brian De Palma’s 1987 film The Untouchables might be the cinematic understatement of the young new year.  What unfolds is a near identical film in its broad strokes, while distinguishing itself in the smaller details of having virtually no ambition and poor writing, hoping instead that a constant barrage of gunfire and cacophony will drown out its ineptness.  Everything you would expect is present and accounted for, from wiseguy accents (a laughably inconsistent Ryan Gosling), female moles (a ridiculously miscast Emma Stone), classic cars, Nostalgic sets, a scenery chewing villain (Sean Penn, giving only what could be expected from a hackneyed director), and of course tommy guns, perhaps the biggest star of the show.  Gangster Squad subscribes to the unfortunate Hollywood preoccupation of late to drown out inconsistencies and a lack of substance with shootouts.  Gangster Squad is not interested in showing what goes on behind the scenes of Cohen's criminal empire, nor is it interested in developing Cohen beyond reactions to the lawmen thwarting his plans.  Penn's reading of Cohen is all bluster.  He's good, but it's the kind of thing Sean Penn can do in his sleep; Cohen has only two modes, cocky and vengeful.  If there's one thing that repeated viewings of The Untouchables should have taught director Reuben Fleischer, it's how to make the most of your villain.  Robert De Niro had barely a fraction of the screentime as Cohen, and yet his presence was consistently felt.  Everybody who has seen that film can instantly recall the dinner scene and the baseball bat.  In Gangster Squad, at the perfunctory scenes where Cohen needs to off one of his henchmen it actually feels like the baseball bat is being used on the audience.  And the gang of lawmen, organized by Sgt. John O'Mara (a woeful Josh Brolin, who has proven that he deserves better) are developed only by contrivances, dictated by cliches.  And the inevitable affair between Gosling and Stone, whose betrayal of Cohen is a matter of necessity in films like this, lacks credibility and chemistry, as it progresses outside of the film's narrative until the end, when it becomes expedient for Cohen to suddenly know what's going on. 

I call this gangster porn because it contains, in abundance, everything that one would expect to see in a typical film cut from this genre, and that is all that it appears to care about.  The film is a series of scenes, ticked off a checklist, and held together by no other reason than the fact that the same people happen to walk into and out of each one.  It's for people who enter the theatre thinking they are going to see a gangster film, and who then leave the theatre thinking they just saw a gangster film.  No more thought is necessary.  The film ends with a gigantic shootout, as if everything that came before was just prologue.  Bullets are exchanged inside a hotel lobby, the two sides separated by a Christmas display, and slow motion is used to show decorative glass balls exploding.  It's a distraction from the scene, a shiny object in a room full of burnished nostalgia, created by someone without any ability, or desire, to focus themselves.  In itself, it is a microcosm of the entire film, a distraction from any sort of legitimate storyline.  It takes its audience for granted, and then takes them for a ride. 

Gangster Squad is as generic as its title, which in a way tells you everything you need to know about the film.  The Untouchables took its name from attributes of central characters in the film, from Capone, who boasted that he was untouchable, to the group of lawmen hunting him down.  Gangster Squad tries the same thing, but it's perfectly happy to never scratch beneath the surface.  At one point in the film a character looks up at the stars and wonders if the squad is really any different than Cohen and his gang, while the audience is left to wonder if Gangster Squad is really any different than any other gangster film.

** out of *****