Gangster Squad (2012)

[Nighthawk]

This upcoming movie, set in L.A. in the 40's, looks sweet: http://trailers.apple.com/trailers/wb/gangstersquad/

[mkhand]

love the image of them coming shooting through the silvered screen!

[Film Noir Press - Noir news from the internet]

Warner Bros.Dirty Harry would love ‘Gangster Squad,’ a movie about cops who operate so far outside the law they make Clint Eastwood’s signature detective look like a pencil-pushing dweeb. Assembled by LAPD police chief Bill Parker (Nick Nolte), and supposedly inspired by a true story, the members of the so-called Gangster Squad operate as judge, jury, and executioners. They don’t arrest their targets; they “wage war” against their enemy, mob boss Mickey Cohen (Sean Penn). In their quest to bust up Cohen’s rackets, the Gangster Squad brandishes about a billion guns and not a single badge. Hell, even Dirty Harry waited until the end of his movie to toss his away.
The Squad is led by World War II veteran turned LAPD Sgt. John O’Mara (Josh Brolin), an incorruptible and unstoppable police officer. Early in the film, he charges into a Cohen-owned brothel and single-handedly rescues a woman who’s about to be sold into sex slavery. Does he have a warrant? Warrant, schmarrant! They’re bad dudes. O’Mara tears the place apart, earning the admiration of Chief Parker, who puts him charge of his new anti-mob task force.
O’Mara’s men will operate in secret, answer to no one, and kill whoever gets in their way. Once his team is put in place — including a boozy lothario (Ryan Gosling), a knife-throwing beat cop (Anthony Mackie), an electronics and surveillance expert (Giovanni Ribisi), a dead-eyed gun hand (Robert Patrick) and his rookie partner (Michael Peña), O’Mara has free reign to break the law as he sees fit. In order to bring Cohen down, the Squad robs underground casinos, torches illegal sportsbooks, and install secret listening devices in the mob boss’ home. Due process, schmue process! The Gangster Squad will duly process your corpse once they’ve shot you to death.
That ‘Gangster Squad”s heroes are government-sanctioned vigilantes is not necessarily a problem; that ‘Gangster Squad’ accepts that premise so incuriously is. A handful of tossed-off lip service dialogue aside (interestingly, the one member of the team to voice serious reservations about their behavior is also the first to die), the film simply and unquestioningly revels in the Gangster Squad’s unchecked violence. It’s a glossy production with really impressive 1940s Los Angeles period details, but that’s it: gloss with nothing beneath the shiny surfaces.
Those surfaces were directed by Ruben Fleischer, whose ‘Zombieland’ showed a real flair for bending the rules of traditional genre moviemaking. With ‘Gangster Squad,’ whether it was his choice or the studio’s, Fleischer shows much less interest in experimentation — this is a straight-ahead, meat-and-potatoes, cops-and-robbers-and-none-of-that-thinking-stuff affair. It’s not totally devoid of pleasures, at least superficial ones. Everything and everyone looks great; the Gangster Squad patrolling the neon-lit L.A. night in their period suits, overcoats, and hats, shooting up glamorous hotels in ultra-slo-mo.

The lovely Emma Stone strikes quite a figure as Grace, a woman torn between Penn’s Cohen and Gosling’s Jerry Wooters. Stone and Gosling have worked together before, in 2011

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[Film Noir Press - Noir news from the internet]

Imagine it's 1949, and you're a cop, and you get the assignment to form a vigilante squad of five or six men to bring down the empire of Mickey Cohen, the biggest gangster in Los Angeles. What would you do?
One obvious strategy would be sabotage. Find his assets, go there after hours and start blowing things up. Keeping your identities secret would be essential, so you wouldn't do anything out in the open. And with only six guys, you would never walk into one of his establishments with revolvers and shoot it out against 20 gangsters with machine guns. That would be stupid, wouldn't it? And yet that is precisely what the cops in "Gangster Squad" keep doing, so they must be stupid, and the filmmakers must expect us not to notice.
Here's the problem: A movie like this - set in the film noir days of post-war Los Angeles - gains a lot from its historical authenticity (or even the illusion of it). But by the second or third time the gangster squad provokes some insane public gunfight with Cohen's army, you catch on that you're not seeing something real or almost real, but an attempt to ramp up an old story for maximum action. With that realization goes the illusion of this movie's integrity. What's left is nothing terrible, just typical.
We meet the villain as he snarls into the camera, and the narrator tells us this is Mickey Cohen - as everyone in the audience thinks, "No, actually, that's Sean Penn." This is the challenge any well-known actor assumes when he takes on a character role, but Penn's provides so much psychological detail that Cohen becomes fascinating - evil to the point of demonic but also tense, bitter, resentful, bottled up and strange.
Penn succeeds in this despite a script that has him acting like a one-note James Bond villain. On three occasions, an underling screws something up and apologizes, and Cohen accepts the apology and then immediately has the person killed. In the funniest example (but was it intended to be funny?), he says to his henchmen, "You know the drill." Whereupon, a huge drill is produced, and blood is sprayed everywhere. It's something out of "Monty Python." We're to assume that drills are kept in every room, just in case he chooses to use that expression.
By now, you might have inferred that "Gangster Squad" is an exceedingly violent movie, from an early scene in which a man is chained to two cars and torn in half to the climactic machine-gun battle at a hotel. The film was scheduled to open in September, but following the mass killings in Aurora, Colo., a scene depicting people getting machine-gunned inside a movie theater had to be cut and re-shot. Now the machine guns are in Chinatown. Director Ruben Fleischer leans hard on the violence card but with little return in the way of excitement and at the expense of character and story.
Josh Brolin plays the leader of the gangster squad as a kind of dedicated dunce, which is appropriate considering their clumsy antics. Ryan Gosling has more nuance as his right-hand man, but Emma Stone is completely out of her element as a slinky film noir heroine, a walking anachronism.
Speaking of anachronisms, at one point, Stone stands up from her table at a nightclub and says, "I think I'll have a cigarette," and in another scene, a gangster is shown smoking on a balcony. Historical footnote: Until around 1980, people actually went inside to smoke and outside to breathe.



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[Film Noir Press - Noir news from the internet]

Dangerously stylish: Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling in Gangster Squad

Forget black and white: the newest sartorial marker between good and evil is single-versus double-breasted suiting – or so posits Gangster Squad, a film noir style caper from director Ruben Fleischer that opened this weekend.
Set in 1940s gangland Los Angeles and based on the true story of East Coast-born kingpin gangster – and confirmed double-breasted devotee – Mickey Cohen (Sean Penn), the film features a team of gumshoe coppers, led by single-breasted stalwart Sgt. John O’Mara (Josh Brolin), tasked with running the bad guys out of town.
It also contains another fashion-star-making turn from Emma Stone as the love interest/gangster’s moll, complete with claret-red bias-cut evening dress: nipped in at the waist, slashed at the thigh and with a long, noose-like halter neck (symbolic of the gangster’s grip on the girl no doubt). But despite a series of figure skimming gowns on Stone, the focus here is firmly on the guys and their gear.
Those on the side of justice are almost exclusively clad in heavy single-breasted suit jackets. “We didn’t go for any wools that were under a 12-ounce weight. It wasn’t about comfort in those days, it was about long lasting,” explains Mary Zophres, an Academy Award-nominated designer whose team made 90 per cent of the costumes that appear in the film.
Sporting a cork-brown felt fedora pulled firmly down at the brim – a unique piece created by Chicago-based milliner Optimo – a single-breasted clad Brolin contrasts neatly with gangster Cohen, who in real life was said to have never worn the same suit twice (as Cohen used to get his suits made by his own dodgy tailoring shop). Similarly, Penn’s character never wears the same outfit in multiple scenes, his hot temper offset by a wardrobe of double-breasted suits in cool greys, blues and blacks.
Caught between these two poles is Sgt. Jerry Wooters (Ryan Gosling) – a member of Brolin’s squad whose true motives are often hidden behind his penchant for hard liquor and loose women – his questionable allegiance reflected in his style. Like gangster Cohen, Wooters favors a double-breasted long line wool blazer, as opposed to his colleagues’ single-breasted styles.
But if his suit choices are morally suspect, Wooter’s stylishness is beyond reproach. Not only does he sport a natty pair brown leather lace-up loafers with a mesh raffia woven tongue, sourced from a vintage dealer in San Francisco, but some of the most decorative ties in a film full of look-at-me neck wear. One particularly flamboyant example in deep red with an art deco design etched in silver is almost more eye-catching than a ricocheting bullet.

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[Film Noir Press - Noir news from the internet]

By Hillary Weston , January 11, 2013



Word among critics thus far appears to be that Gangster Squad, Ruben Fleischer's stab at the neo-noir crime-drama genre,*leaves much to be desired. With a cast led by Ryan Gosling and Sean Penn, that's a disappointment to say the least. And when we first saw these great promotional photos for the film, we couldn't help but wonder—what if Fleischer had chosen to shoot the film with this aesthetic? What if the film was filled with some Gordon Willis-esque shadowplay and, say, Cliff Martinez and Max Richter covering the music for the film? What if he took the pacing down a notch, with less explosions and thrills and more smokey simmering?
But apparently, the actual result is quite a mess, with*Indiewire even claiming that the film:

vacillates between gory Zack Snyder-ish cartoon stylization and po-faced seriousness, all through the lens of genuinely ugly digital cinematography that makes Public Enemies look like a pre-Raphaelite painting. It's written by future Justice League writer Will Beall as a mix of cliches and nonsensical plot developments. And it's acted, for the most part (Ryan Gosling's watchable, once you realize that he seems to be doing some kind of performance art homage to co-star Giovanni Ribisi in The Other Sister) by an ensemble who are either miscast (Emma Stone), wildly overacting (Sean Penn), boring (Josh Brolin) or entirely wasted (everybody else).

Ouch.
So, in lieu of spending your money on a movie ticket this weekend, why not stay home and catch up on some of Hollywood best neo-noirs that have never gone out of style.




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[cigar joe]

I haven't seen it yet, but a buddy who is a noir aficionado gives his review:

Quote from: dave jenkins on Yesterday at 09:40:46 AM

Gangster Squad (2013) - 7/10. An unofficial team of LAPD members bring maximum heat to bear on the operations of gangster Mickey Cohen (Sean Penn and an amazing prosthetic nose). "Inspired by True Events" and set in 1949, the film has a color palette that matches postcards of the period (if you doubt it all you have to do is wait for the end credits--done as postcards--to do a comparison). It also has CGI that makes an LA that no longer exists live again. It even has men who smoke, know how to work lighters, and wear hats. And it has a squad of stereotypes--the hard-charging, no-nonsense leader (Josh Brolin), the goofy sidekick (Ryan Gosling), the Black Guy, the Latino, the Old Guy, the nerdy electronics expert. Nonetheless, these characters are re-invested with traits that make them worth caring about. Emma Stone is in the picture as Gosling's love interest, and her character is used in a way that is actually important to the story. (Special acknowlegement needs to go to Mireille Enos as Brolin's long-suffering wife: both performance and role are exceptional). Not all the plot tracks--I'm guessing there were some scenes cut and that there's an extended-version of the film in our future--but things move along so quickly there's almost no time for any head scratching. Many of the plot turns are predictable--but again, old skins have been filled with new wine, and it's all to the good. And when the terms of the final confrontation were announced it was all I could do to keep myself from doing a fist pump. Some of the action was hard to follow (which accounts for my giving the film a reduced score) but there is no dint of excitement. Comparisons will no doubt be made with The Untouchables--for my part, I think GS is the better film--but the movie I was most frequently reminded of was Dick Tracy (I just got the blu-ray a couple weeks back, so that may account for it). The one really refreshing aspect of the film is its lack of irony. The film is about tough men with a tough job who don't have the luxury to second-guess themselves. And the filmmakers respect what the characters do--the men are presented as true heroes, men who returned victoriously from WW2 and found themselves with an even more difficult war to fight. They fought and they won, with honor. Damn straight.

[Steve-O]

Joe, your friend's review seems about right.

Saw it tonight. More Dick Track than The Untouchables. More Warner Gangster movie than film noir. (and see what I mean about the liberal use of the term Film noir in the reviews above? Aside from being a crime film from 1949 how in the world could they come to that conclusion?

I would go as far as say the cast of Gangster Squad should have done a Dick Track film instead! They are all perfect for that, especially Josh Brolin as the square-jawed Dick.

Interestingly, the end credits featuring classic LA postcards had no music. I don't know if it was a mistake but I can't remember a film with no music at all at the end...

(here in CT, a few of the trailers before the movie were a bit unnerving (we're about 5 miles from Sandy Hook). A film called "A Bullet in the Head" with Sly Stallone, and another Die Hard -- featuring Bruce opening up a car trunk with piles and piles of assault weapons. His eyes light up like it's Christmas morning. You could feel everyone just frowning at the gun worship in the trailers. Yet Gangster Squad is quite violent too and has plenty of guns. It's done in such a straight forward manner it wasn't uncomfortable at all. No explanation, but that's what I observed.)

[Nighthawk]

I've been on the fence about this one ever since the reviews started coming out -- they seem split right down the middle, evenly divided between those who say it's pretty decent and those who say it's no good. I'll probably wait until it comes out on blu-ray or catch it in a second-run theater.

[Movie Memories]

My interest for this is also lukewarm. I'm sure I will see it at some point and have read somewhere that there is a fine reproduction of Hollywood's notorious old Garden of Allah, which would interest me, although I'm pretty sure any representation of it would be a short one.

[Steve-O]

I would probably agree this is a rental. Interesting but not all that great. Very much a January release.

[Film Noir Press - Noir news from the internet]

A drill drives through a victim's skull, and when the blood splatters against the glass, the scene cuts to a raw hamburger patty hitting the fire of a backyard barbecue grill. That is only the beginning of blood and gore, and you are squirming already!Inspired by a true story and based on a non-fiction book written by Paul Lieberman, Gangster Squad is a sleek, stylish but superficial mobster-cop film. It is a take on how a clandestine unit of Los Angeles Police Department supposedly crushed one of Los Angeles' powerful gangster in 1949 with strictly off-the-books tactics.
Set in sepia tone, the first few minutes of this noir film delves on how Los Angles has deteriorated. With the city's police and politicians in his pocket, ruthless, power-crazy mafia don Mickey Cohen controls LA. The brutality carried out by him is also entertaining in a grim sort of way - locking up innocent girls fresh off the train and keeping them hooked on Mexican dope or burning his own goons alive in closed elevator shafts.
Attempting to stop this single-handedly, honest cop John O'Mara is tasked by the Chief of Police with recruiting an undercover, off-the-books team to destroy Cohen.
Signing up in due course are Sergeant Jerry Wooters, whose womanizing skills come in handy to lure Cohen's moll Grace Faraday into their game; Central Avenue black beat cop Coleman Harris; old cowboy sharpshooter Max Kennard; eavesdropping technology expert Conwell Keeler; and Latino novice, tag-along Navidad Ramirez.
It appears to be a fool's mission, with a series of violent raids on Cohen's bars, clubs and casinos, the first of which plays like a slapstick farce. But the plan also guarantees a steady stream of adrenaline-pumping action.
Without a fine cast of actors, this would just be a high-gloss caper. The acting is uniformly first-rate, especially by Josh Brolin as the single-minded sergeant John O'Mara and Ryan Gosling as the narcissistic sergeant Jerry Wooters. Brolin holds steady as the man who seems to be carrying the world on his shoulders, though he is regularly upstaged by Gosling with a cool, off-handed approach, gradually fraying at the edges.
Sean Penn as Mickey Cohen is just downright scary with a heart-piercing, droopy-eyed stare. Unfortunately, the other characters are less convincingly portrayed. They have a lot of potential, but most of it goes untapped. Nevertheless, each actor gets a moment or two to shine.
There is something innocently naughty and flirtatious about Will Beall's script of Gangster Squad. The story flirts from a hardcore gangster-crime film to the heart=-tugging emotional quotient of the squad. What tops the list is the sexual affair between Wooters and Mickey Cohen's current mistress, Claire. Especially when Wooters saucily says, "I like to play games, especially post office. But not like how kids play"! It elicits a chuckle among the audience.
The best thing about "Gangster Squad" is how Ruben Fliescher got the trappings of the 1940s right. The coupes and sedans, the people, the Hollywood stucco, the band singers in neon-lit clubs and Mafioso bars - it is as good as it gets in the movies. The cinematographer has captured the era enigmatically.
On a separate note, the action set and the background score, is worth a mention.
But whilst the film is occasionally stylish and fun in a cartoonish way, the fact is that it has a few wrinkles. One of which is that; O'Mara's pregnant wife is dead against him going after Cohen, fair enough, but then she is suddenly hand-picking the squad.
Watch the film for the stylish performances of the squad.




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[Film Noir Press - Noir news from the internet]

NEW YORK – *With “Gangster Squad,” director Reuben Fleischer (“Zombieland”) attempts to tap into the classicism of 1940s noir films with a stacked deck of great talent, but comes up empty-handed. A glitzy production design certainly creates an almost cartoonish version of Los Angeles with coppers and mobsters duking it out in the streets like the wild west, but “Gangster Squad” is ultimately a shallow and violent shoot-em-up that’s heavy on brawn and light on just about everything else.
Somewhere in this hyper-stylized actioner are remnants of some previously-conceived film, a better movie that feels as if it has been methodically stripped down over time, losing the pulpiness of the genre to the video game culture, with action sequences grasping for the audiences’ attention with flash-editing and slow-mo punching and shooting. While it may suit Guy Ritchie’s films, those contemporary stylizations are obtrusive when combined with the 1940s period sets, hammy dialogue and decadent costumes.
“Gangster Squad” is inspired by true events and follows the off-the-books LA officers who, at the tail end of the 1940s, went after the notorious Mickey Cohen (Sean Penn), his gang of mobsters and their stronghold over the police and politicians in Los Angeles.
Josh Brolin is Sgt. John O’Mara, the all-American WWII vet who hasn’t quite put the war behind him and with an itchy temperament is looking to jump right back into another against Cohen. Brolin is a perfect fit for the gruff 1940s copper and is a nice contrast to the boyish, free-wheeling boozer Jerry Wooters (Ryan Gosling). Gosling and Brolin rise above the material to create two very entertaining performances as two cops usually at odds with one another.
Besides Wooters, O’Mara’s task force is also comprised of a quick-shot cowboy and his mentee (Robert Patrick and Michael Peña), a radio specialist (Giovanni Ribisi) and a tough, knife-wielding beat cop (Anthony Mackie). They aren’t quite Elliot Ness’s ‘Untouchables,’ but the ensemble does a fine job holding their own. The film also stars Nick Nolte as the police chief, Mireille Enos (“The Killing”) as O’Mara’s wife and Emma Stone as the damsel in distress, an aspiring actor who becomes entangled with Mickey Cohen and Wooters. The film spends little time on characterization, other than to let them remind us over and over that they were in the war, before rushing right into one fight after another. Like a video game, when one battle is over, the characters move on to the next, even bigger battle.
“Gangster Squad” is predictable and unnecessarily violent, but the cast holds the attention, especially Sean Penn’s boisterous performance as the sadistic Mickey Cohen. He runs the gamut from the expected clichéd mobster tyrant, to gruesomely chilling to some surprising subtle moments. But the awkward makeup job on his face makes him look less like a real person and more like a Dick Tracy comic strip character.
The movie hasn't been without controversy. Just after the Aurora shootings in July, the film was pulled from an August release for re-shoots because a major set-piece included a shootout between O’Mara and Cohen’s goons inside the crowded Mann’s Chinese Theater. The parallels were too stark for the film to be released.
Even with the wealth of great talent, the hyper-stylized “Gangster Squad” suffers from cheap effects and a weak script and is ultimately more video game than noir classic.



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[cigar joe]

How many gangster films do we have based circa 1950's Los Angeles, how many novels come to mind? Other than James Elroy's LA Quartet and his related novels and films, not a whole hell of a lot. Gangster Films inevitably revolve around New York and Chicago with a occasional nod to Las Vegas.

Gangster Squad though isn't really a Gangster Film. I was reminded more of "The Dirty Dozen" than "The Godfather" "The Professionals" more than "Goodfellas" its structure is more in the vein of a "men on a mission" film. You may think then that it would be more akin to "The Untouchables" (1987) same premise but that film was a meandering moralizing bloated mess. It was actually more like what I remember of The Untouchables TV drama with Walter Winchell doing a voice-over, every episode about a raid on an illegal distillery or a brewery.

Sean Penn plays Mickey Cohen as a downright scary over the top sociopath gang leader of LA's mob with a dedicated ex guerrilla trained GI Josh Brolin on his tail with a squad of hand picked off the book LAPD hard cases across a demographical spectrum. The rest of the cast are great, but most are underutilized, the film could have been a tad bit longer to flesh out the characters. Ryan Gosling (the womanizer), Robert Patrick (the old school gunslinger), Anthony Mackie (the ghetto, knife-wielding black cop), Giovanni Ribisi ( geek electronics expert), and Michael Pena ( Hispanic cop). More time also was needed with the Cohen gang.

The movie is a time machine to LA of the 50's (even Carmen Miranda makes an appearance) beautiful to look at with a top notch production design. I'll have to pick up the DVD to see how many Gangster/Film Noir references I can spot. Noticed a few other possible Crime/Noir quotes myself - The pool execution looked identical to William Holden's demise in Sunset Blvd., and Josh Brolin's toss of his LAPD badge into the Pacific reminded me Eastwood's toss of his San Francisco PD badge into the gravel pit pond in Dirty Harry.

A fun guilty pleasure pastiche of a Classic Gangster/men on a mission/40's Pulp and unlike LA Confidential this one got the HATS right. 8/10

[Emile Cross]

Just saw it
Went in hoping to see Emma Stone thrive in a Femme Fatale roll and some snappy hard boiled dialogue

There wasn't much of either or any sort of substance in the movie but if you want to see explosions and shoot outs in that 40's LA setting go for it

Just don't expect good acting or a decent plot it has neither

[cigar joe]

Its not a noir, more of a gangster/Dirty Dozen type mash-up, Sean Penn was good, I'm visually oriented, and seeing a re-imagined 50's LA with noir-ish archetypes was a treat.

[Steve-O]

the movie took place in the 40s actually, but it does look a bit like the 50s. I remember specifically them mentioning 1949 because I started going over noirs from that year in my head when it popped on the screen (I suppose the story bleed into the 50s).

I do know quite a bit of b-noirs take place in LA, only because they always use that stock shot of LA City Hall... which they also do in Gangster Squad.

Abandoned, Crime Wave and 711 Ocean Drive pop to mind. In fact, the whole wire service, techie part (Giovanni Ribisi in Gangster Squad) reminded me of O'Brien in 711 Ocean Drive.



But gangster movies, not so much. There was (and I can't for the life of me remember) a Cagney gangster movie that supposed to take place in Chicago but there's Palm trees lining the streets (clearly shot in LA). And wasn't there a Cagney one where he goes to LA and becomes a gangster in movies? edit: Lady Killer (1933) But yeah, most gangster films take place in Chicago and NY.

[Emile Cross]

Its not a noir, more of a gangster/Dirty Dozen type mash-up, Sean Penn was good, I'm visually oriented, and seeing a re-imagined 50's LA with noir-ish archetypes was a treat.

You liked Sean Penn's performance?

To me that was one of the worst parts of the movie

Way over done and I can't imagine a less threatening gangster than Sean Penn

[Nighthawk]

You liked Sean Penn's performance?

To me that was one of the worst parts of the movie

Way over done and I can't imagine a less threatening gangster than Sean Penn

Based solely on the previews, it looks like Penn moves well beyond chewing the scenery and into the realm of completely devouring it.

[Film Noir Press - Noir news from the internet]

I have enjoyed gangster flicks since I was a child.

The first I remember seeing is 1987’s “The Untouchables.” While I enjoy the fictional characters of “Scarface” and “The Godfather,” I prefer watching movies about gangsters who actually existed. I just think having one of the main villains be a real person makes the movie more intriguing.

“Gangster Squad” is inspired by a true story. Whenever Hollywood uses the words “inspired by” I know the filmmakers took plenty of liberties with the story, but I can always look up the historic version of what happened after I enjoy the film.

The real life villain in “Gangster Squad” is* the former boxer turned vicious mob boss Mickey Cohen, played by Sean Penn. As usual, Penn does an excellent job embodying his character. Penn plays the character as a power hungry crook who doesn’t give anyone a second chance and doesn’t apologize for his cruel behavior. There is no mistaking Cohen as anything but a murderous reprobate who controls 1949 Los Angeles through money and influence.

During this corrupt time, LA’s police Chief Parker, played by Nick Nolte, decides to fight Cohen through some unusual means. He recruits the toughest and most honest cop he can find to form a crew to go to war with Cohen — Sgt. John O’Mara.

This hardworking and tough-as-nails police officer is portrayed by Josh Brolin. While putting together his crew, O’Mara’s wife, Connie, helps to handpick the men she wants fighting beside her husband.

The group includes the brash and good with a knife, Coleman Harris; the sharpshooter Max Kennard and his protégé Navidad Ramirez; the streetwise Jerry Wooters; and the brains to balance out the brawn Conway Keeler. The characters are portrayed by Anthony Mackie, Robert Patrick, Michael Peña, Ryan Gosling and Giovanni Ribisi.
Each of these men receive a spotlight at different points in the film, but the main stars of the plot are O’Mara and Wooters.

O’Mara is gung-ho about the mission, but Wooters is the reluctant addition. He also finds himself entwined with Cohen by stealing the villain’s girl, Grace Faraday, played by Emma Stone.

While I would not put “Gangster Squad” in the same prestigious company as “The Godfather” or “The Untouchables,” I still enjoyed the movie as an exciting romp through the 1940s battle between cops and criminals.
The movie’s style reminded me of film noir. However, I wasn’t expecting much gore in this film and there were a few scenes that surprised me.
“Gangster Squad” is rated R for strong violence and language.
Rating 3 popcorns.



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