Gangster Squad

Redbox Roundup

By Louis Lalire

Ruben Fleischer’s 1940 crime film is one that does not that add anything new or interesting to the genre. Its impressive art direction and cast are completely wasted on a dull, predictable story that clings to cliché with each turn.

John O’Mara, played convincingly enough by Josh Brolin, is a loyal cop who puts honor and duty above all else, even his pregnant wife, Connie (Mireille Enos). The city of Los Angeles is being conquered by crime lord Mickey Cohen (Sean Penn), and O’Mara is ordered to get together a crew--I don’t know, I guess you could call it a “Gangster Squad”--to take Cohen down, guerrilla-warfare style. “The only rule of this outfit,” O’Mara says, “is that you leave your badges at home.”

The first third of the film, the most enjoyable part, plays out like a lame re-working of John Sturges’ The Magnificent Seven (which, in turn, was a nice Western re-working of Akira Kurosowa’s Seven Samurai). O’Mara assembles his crew, complete with Cowboy gunslinger Max Kennard (Robert Patrick) and a knife specialist, the most explicit Magnificent Seven reference, Coleman Harris (Anthony Mackie).  Ryan Gosling fills the “Steve Mcqueen guy who’s quiet, but is way cooler and more interesting than the #1 man” role. Gosling reminds me very much of McQueen, altogether, I blame this…

There are a couple of other members in the squad, but it doesn’t really matter, because the film doesn’t bother making any of these characters remotely interesting, outside of O’Mara and Wooters.

Kennard and his apprentice, Navidad (Michael Pena), are given a moment early in the film in which Kennard is teaching Navidad to shoot a moving target: “Don’t shoot where it is,” Kennard says, “Shoot where it’s going to be”. That seems logical. He repeats this line at an opportune time in the film’s climactic gunfight…and that’s just about all there is to say about those two. Coleman Harris is even more absent. He has two defining characteristics: 1) that he can throw knives with exceptional accuracy and 2) that he’s black…It’s hard not to feel bad for Mackie, who had absolutely nothing to work with here. The final member of the squad, Conway Keeler (Giovanni Ribsi), has his moments as the brains of the operation (a role that is absolutely necessary in any successful film that involves some sort of gang or crew or team). But he too is not given the time to rise above cliché.

Instead the film spends far too much time with its one-note villain, Mickey Cohen, who spends his time either yelling at someone, telling one of his goons to kill someone, killing one of his goons, or saying things like “A cop that’s not for sale is like a dog that’s got rabies”…and so forth. It’s not even a boring performance; it’s a headache-inducing performance.

The rest of the film consists of two good gunfights, one in the desert in cars and one on a grand stairway (reminiscent of The Untouchables), Emma Stone being sexy and underused, and a number of illogical and humdrum tactical maneuvers by both Cohen and the Gangster Squad. There’s plenty of action, but it turns out the loud and constant “rat-tat-tat” of the Tommy guns only serve to keep the audience awake, because, unfortunately, it’s the only thing that will.