Fridae

Gangster Squad is one of those movies that seems to operate on virtual autopilot. All you need is to understand the characters and their types and you can probably guess where all their character trajectories are headed and what their fates are going to be. The conflict is so pulpy and black and white I more than suspect that Will Beall's script started off as a rejected draft of Dick Tracy. In fact the film shares so much in common with Warren Beatty's film of the same pre-war comic that one suspects that it's more likely Will Beall plagiarized three quarters of his script from that version too, along with smatterings of The Untouchables, just without David Mamet's flair for dialogue.

The film while on the true story of LA's Gangster Squad; an off-the-book police unit who were not above extrajudicial killings and disproportionate brutality to get their way with the mob in post-war Los Angeles, is basically pulpy mash all the way through. Mob boss Mickey Cohen (the nasally-empowered Sean Penn, who seems to be shot so he resembles Al Pacino's 'Big Boy' Caprice from Dick Tracy)'s criminal empire is being built in LA with the consent of judges and law enforcement figures he has bought over. Not willing to be bought are Chief Parker (Nick Nolte, who probably not coincidentally played a tough cop not above extrajudicial killings in Mulholland Falls.) who forms the gangster squad. Led by John O'Mara (Josh Brolin),  the square jawed family man of action, the other members include loose cannon Wooters (Ryan Gosling), veteran Max Kennard (Robert Patrick), token minority Coleman Harris (Anthony Mackie), rookie/other token minority Navidad Ramirez (Michael Pena) and techie Conway Keeler (Giovanni Ribisi).

Fill in just about every single stereotype you know about those character types I listed and you probably can figure out how the movie proceeds on your own. Will the square jawed family man of action have a young son and a pregnant wife in order to up the stakes for him? Will the loose cannon make bedroom eyes at Cohen's gunmoll Grace Faraday (Emma Stone) and hit the sheets with her?  Will there be an old school gangster lecturing Cohen about his hubris (of course, it helps that said figure is played here by Jon Polito from Miller's Crossing, what would a gangster movie be without him)? Will there be a shootout in a nightclub that begins just as the singer finishes her big number?  If you said yes to all those questions, this is a movie you would pretty much have figured out.

What barely saves the film is the casting, in particular the charismas of Brolin, Gosling and Stone, and cinematography by Dion Beebe, which gives the film a saturated art-deco look that pays attention to the story's pulpy nature and roots. Director Ruben Fleischer is probably aware he's saddled with a by-the-numbers script and concentrates on shooting it the best he can, maintaining kinetic, well-timed action scenes and a jazzy score by Steve Jablonsky. All that's missing are names like Flattop, Mumbles and Pruneface.

Gangster Squad is perfectly disposable pulp mash, you won't be disappointed if you choose to see it for the visuals and music alone, but you're not missing much if you miss out on it.