GANGSTER SQUAD has been known for its troublesome delays when it should have instead be placed in turnaround. It's a defective crime film that swings back and forth between serious film noir and gory comedy, neither of which are ever charming to watch. It's so tacky and unprofessional that it makes the poverty row era a golden age of cinema. Hell, I shouldn't mock it as that; at least those filmmakers who cut their teeth in the business help create some stellar films, such as the now classic DETOUR.
The plot is embarrassingly quick to summarize: Mickey Cohen (Sean Penn) wants to take control all of Los Angeles and it is up to an assembled group of cops to work off the books and destroy his growing empire. I should be easily telling you the cops' names and the highly respectable actors unfortunately cast in their roles but all I have are complete stereotypes. Let's start with the worst first: Anthony Mackie and Michael Pena, two of the best non-Caucasian actors in Hollywood today, are reduced to being "the black cop" and "the Latino cop" respectively. No genuine back-stories or insights into either of them except that Mackie has a somewhat talent with knives that is painfully underutilized and noticed. The irritation of these two racial blanks is more dire when discussing Pena, since he played an exceptional, well-fleshed out L.A. beat cop in last year's very underrated END OF WATCH. Here, he pops up whenever in the background, having no say or presence, simply because he is labeled as "the boy", despite looking like a sufferer of a mid-life crisis.
Next up are the old man and the nerd. Robert Patrick plays a cowboy cop literally ripped from the pulps; his entrance in the film is preceded by a character intensely staring at the mustachioed gunslinger on the cover of a "true crimes" magazine. He quacks wise and farts up behind the others unless he needs to show off his dime-store tricks with a six-shooter. As for the glasses-wearing nerd, the expected meatbag for the others to cry over later, Giovanni Ribisi is just there to speak techno babble and mope like a hurt dog at all of the brutality. Since all of the undesirables are given nil to work with, that leaves more for the mighty white duo of Josh Brolin and Ryan Gosling's characters. Despite being set in 1949, these two act just like Roger Murtaugh and Martin Riggs, causing a bumbling or vicious ruckus and suffering from the problems of dames. If you think that their female lovers (Mireille Enos and Emma Stone) get the same level of characterization and depth as those two do, you have been watching too many Bogart and Bacall films. Though I appreciate the work Stone was able to dig up and flaunt from her shallow character, I still couldn't believe what a boring femme fatale screenwriter Will Beall came up for her.
Though the script is an eye-rolling, printed press gangster movie, bordering on being a complete swipe of THE UNTOUCHABLES, it is made worst at the hands of director Ruben Fleischer and his editors. Still riding and banking on the goodwill from ZOMBIELAND, Fleischer has assembled a poorly crafted brew, where the film's slick taste is mixed in with objectionable and confusing ingredients. Scenes and plots are skipped over and never fully explained, such as when Brolin's character raids a building he previously barraged through or how exactly Cohen found out who were the cops attacking his business. Every major attack done by the squad is always bookended with a Cohen crony getting savagely murdered while Cohen himself just shakes his arm ever tighter. By far the most heinous thing, however, is the sheer hypocrisy that these cops, several of whom were WWII soldiers, would endanger and/or cause the death of civilians while embarking on their vigilante missions. This becomes a major point in a sequence set in Chinatown, a sequence that should be noted as the re-shoot for the controversial movie theater scene cut from the final cut, only to be dropped and never elaborated because the last third needs to be a wide display of bloodshed, complete with the heroes carrying army-issued weaponry.
All of this bile makes the film a horrible ride to experience. Though this is true, I still was entertained by the big-named cast despite the limitations placed on their shoulders. The only ones able to break free and generate some much needed laughs and excitement were Sean Penn and Ryan Gosling. They relish the hell out of being goofy black and white characters, adapting odd yet vibrant mannerisms. Also, some of the shootouts and action thrills were a bit delightfully B movie-ish. Still, I think I rather immerse myself in MOBSTERS, complete with that acting thespian Christian Slater, than give GANGSTER SQUAD an appeal.
FINAL REVIEW: 2 / 5
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