A confident and determined man is consumed by the desire to shape his city’s fate. Employing every means at his disposal, he pursues his dream with fervour, overlooking the emotional and physical fallout of his obsession. A band of trusty offsiders assist in his task, laying waste to their adversaries. The city is forever altered by their actions, with positive and negative consequences.
The year is 1949, and the man is John O’Mara (Josh Brolin, Men in Black 3), a military hero turned dogged cop. Under instructions from Police Chief Parker (Nick Nolte, Warrior), he creates a clandestine gangster squad – with smooth-talking Jerry Wooters (Ryan Gosling, The Ides of March), knife-throwing Rocky Washington (Anthony Mackie, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter), smart-thinking Conway Keeler (Giovanni Ribisi, Ted), sharp-shooting Max Kennard (Robert Patrick, Safe House) and his offsider Navidad Ramirez (Michael Pena, End of Watch) – to help him rid Los Angeles of the infiltrating mob.
Opposing O’Mara is mafioso Mickey Cohen (Sean Penn, This Must Be the Place), his nemesis; together with their henchmen, the two men battle for control of the city.
Their prolonged duel is charted in Gangster Squad, inspired by real events. And while director Ruben Fleischer (Zombieland) and writer Will Beall (TV’s Castle) have taken liberties with their source material – Paul Lieberman’s true crime novel, Tales from the Gangster Squad – in order to emphasize the commonalities between their protagonists, it is the cartoonish tone the duo have carried over from their respective earlier works that is more disorientating.
Gangster Squad is a pulp vision of the struggle for law and order. The murky line between good and evil proves just one element of the larger-than-life tale, with the film’s predilection for exaggeration as pronounced as its structural and narrative simplicity. Dialogue drips with puns and characters are played as clichés, to the point of comedy. Plot points are cobbled together just as haphazardly, including the feature’s love triangle of Wooters, Cohen and their shared squeeze, Grace Faraday (Emma Stone, The Amazing Spider-Man).
Incongruously, the staging and style sits in stark contrast, harking back to the measured gangster epics of yesteryear. Such a mismatch is distracting, particularly during Gangster Squad’s many displays of violence. Further, it highlights the feature’s misfires in both camps, with the clichés and corniness not quite reaching Dick Tracey levels of parody (even if many performances – Penn’s especially – easily achieve the feat), and the sense of serious The Untouchables-esque drama tempered by aesthetic gimmickry. The end product is passable but pedestrian, perhaps the most disappointing outcome for a gangster film.
Rating: 2 ½ stars out of 5
Gangster Squad
Director: Ruben Fleischer
USA, 2013, 113 min
In cinemas January 10
Distributor: Roadshow
Rated MA
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