The Walrus Moose has fake news, but real movie reviews. This is one of those reviews.
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Coulda, woulda, shoulda. Gangster Squad could have been much more than what is presented to you. Granted, they had to re-shoot some scenes so as not to be distasteful to some real-life events that happened in an actual movie theater in Colorado. Still, the movie is tonally uneven and the characters are basically a mystical, magical bunch of mis-fits that come together to stop one of the Chicago crime bosses, Mickey Cohen (Sean Penn, who is acting like this movie is his Academy Award chance) who believes that it is in his cards to take over Los Angeles from Nick Nolte, apparently not crooked, and his, apparently, crooked LAPD department.
From the get-go the film gives you a false sense of reality. The screen glows and the phrase "Inspired by True Events" pops up. Now this immediately does two things. One, for audience members who are gullible, this makes the movie basically all fact; two, for audience members not so gullible, this makes the movie not a total piece of crap, but it kind of gets there, because they have, need, must, embellish some scenes to make it an interesting movie. Begin uneven tones. The movie opens with a blonde 20-something waiting at an extremely clean looking LA Union Station. She is picked up by a well-groomed gentleman who probably asks her, "So, you wanna be a star, eh?" (to be read in the most lame 40's low-level, weasely gangster voice ever). Her reply is, of course, "Of course," and trouble ensues. Good thing Josh Brolin, a hardened veteran from World War II who is now a Sergeant in the LAPD, is waiting at the station for trouble like this to happen. Trouble ensues and it later reveals that Sgt. John O'Mara (Brolin) has basically taken down an entire brothel in LA, including showing flashback scenes of him kicking in doors to padlocked rooms and getting the drugged up women out of there before Molotov Cocktail-ing the place into flames.
WHEW. That sounded cool. Right? To be fair, this scene was done a lot cooler in the first Taken, albiet he only took one girl to safety. (Wait, he did?) Well, he probably freed all of them, but he took the girl who had his daughter's incredibly ridiculous denim jacket.
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O'Mara is met by the only clean, repeat ONLY clean, ranking member of the LAPD Chief Parker (Nick Nolte) and asked to single handedly take back Los Angeles by using any means necessary. This begins a montage sequence where O'Mara's "no non-sense" wife is helping him hand-pick not the top-of-the-class detectives, but rather a bunch of mis-fits who have magic powers. No joke. We get Sgt. Jerry Wooters (Ryan Gosling) who is a ladies man and gets any girl he wants, because that's his power along with a Mickey Mouse voice. Next up is Officer Coleman Harris (played by Anthony Mackie) [I could have sworn they called him Lieutenant in the movie], who is the knife-throwing ace. We then have Officer Conway Keeler (Giovanni Ribisi) who is the nerd and tech ace of the crew. Next up is the old, quiet veteran and social reject Officer Max Kennard (T-1000, uh, I mean Robert Patrick). Why is he a social reject? Because he is the only person in the 40's/50's to think that Latino police offers are equal to everyone else. Who is the quiet, young rookie Latino officer? Perpetual good-guy Michael Pena who plays Officer Navidad Ramirez (Yes, Chrismas Ramirez, not I'm not trying to be mean. It's a direct translation). No lie though, Pena is awesome; just watch End of Watch. Got the list of characters down? Good. Because they, each, will only bring up their special skill once in the movie.
As characters go, we have incredibly noir style characters: annoying kid character who wants to shine your shoes, femme fatale character who wants to get away from the bad life and live a normal one, the pregnant wife who is at home...alone when shady stuff goes down who then goes off to be with her sister until her husband realizes that he matters to her more than this stupid, stupid war, wily veterans who give sage advice but claim "I was never here...now take these steaks, you band of hooligans". The list goes on.
As the movie progresses, you get wild montages of the high-stakes take downs of the helter skelter crew. Viewers get no sense of time in this movie, because everything seems to happen within the same few months rather than over years, as the timeline should indicate. Montages aside, the characters' three main actors lives are explored, and this deviates from a tighter, more serious movie. The movie doesn't have to explore these areas in-depth, because those characters introduced are impertinent to the rest of the context of the film. Increased stakes from the protagonists could be established just within the storyline itself. HBO's The Wire is an example of this. The characters in The Wire do have lives outside of the office, but only in glimpses. Rawls in the gay bar, Daniels on top of Rhonda, McNulty with any girl who is willing.
Tonally uneven is also the name of the game with the dialogue. Sean Penn is forced to say lines like "You're talking to God. So, you might as well swear to me." And, "You know the drill" and subsequently one of his thugs literally takes out a drill to kill a guy. Lastly, he's walking out of a car into a fine restaurant and the then-paparazzi ask him questions to only have him reply with a boyish pose and smile for the camera and lame one-line, almost zingers like "Eh!" and "Oh!" This contrasts heavily with the often serious times that Penn has to quietly hold in his seething anger as he talks with another crime boss in LA. Or, when he goes crazy about how a band of hooligans are messing up his operations.
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There's a lot to nitpick with in this movie, and I would go on, but it's a nice day and I want to be outside. Overall, Gangster Squad is just a "meh" kind of movie. It's not serious. It's not goofy. It's too serious mixed with too goofy. So, it has kind of an identity crisis. The casting sort of indicates this with Nolte, Brolin, Gosling (sort of), Mackey and you could even put in Emma Stone. What does this movie's identity want to be? I laughed out loud by myself at some parts and lines of the movie when other audience members sat, engrossed by what was presented on the screen. A lot of "WTF" moments for me, whereas others might have seen it as tonally serious or just what you wanted from a cop movie.
Overall, I'm not dismissing what the real "Gangster Squad" of the 40's and 50's did or did not do, but this portrayal is just a gross misrepresentation of all characters, that I just can't recommend it without telling people that there are much better LA noir-style movies out there. (I'm talking about you, L.A. Confidential).
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TL;DR
Gangster Squad is a goofball movie. Think "Fox Force Five" but on the big screen and with a bunch of guys.
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Highs: Laughs
Lows: A lot of movie tropes, including the one guy who has everything to live for and wants to get out of the business, then dies an unflattering death that spurs the third act of the movie. "MENDOZAAAAA!!!!"
Rating: If it's on TNT, USA or some other cable station in the future, just watch it there, so you can do laundry while watching it.
