This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, Jan. 18, 2013 - I'd describe "Gangster Squad" as a cartoon, except that would be an insult to "Doonesbury" and "Pearls Before Swine." Let’s just say it's a bad movie, a clichéd and often ridiculous attempt to slog in the footsteps of such superior tales of crime and civic rot in old Los Angeles as "Chinatown" and "LA Confidential." (Note: "Chinatown" airs at 7:30 p.m. Jan. 25 as part of the Webster University Film Series.)
Although "Gangster Squad" has a first-rate cast -- Sean Penn as gangster Mickey Cohen, Josh Brolin as the head of a squad of vigilante cops, Ryan Gosling as his sidekick, Nick Nolte as the chief of police, Emma Stone as a gun moll with a soft spot for cops -- the characters these actors are called upon to play are so one-dimensional they verge on being dots.
It's the late 1940s, postwar Los Angeles is booming, and Mickey Cohen has raked in so much lucre from his casinos and prostitutes that he has half the politicians and law-enforcement officials in town on his payroll. Police Sergeant John O'Mara (Brolin), a stalwart war hero, is secretly ordered by the police chief to assemble what might be called an "A-Team" -- a squad of cops who are not averse to breaking a few laws (like the ones against arson and murder) to go after Cohen's illicit empire.
In a scene all-too familiar to movie goers, O'Mara recruits a politically correct squad of semi-official terrorists that includes a black cop (Anthony Mackie) and a Hispanic one (Michael Pena), plus a cowboy (Robert Patrick) and a squirrely precursor to the computer nerd who is obligatory in contemporary crime flicks. This character, who pulls off some highly dubious wiretaps, is played by Giovanni Ribisi, who is actually believable, unlike, say, Emma Stone, who exhibits none of the hard edges that would be required to last more than a few minutes as the girlfriend of a rage-filled gangster boss like Mickey Cohen.
Director Ruben Fleischer ("Zombieland") makes an occasional stab at human interest -- O'Mara has a pregnant wife and a son -- but the movie mainly consists of men firing submachine guns at one another and engaging in hand-to-hand combat. It's usually dark on the screen, even in the daytime, and the action scenes are filmed in such tight close-ups and the editing is so swift that it is very difficult to tell exactly who is doing what to whom. After a while, you don't really care.
'Beasts of the Southern Wild'
"Beasts of the Southern Wild," the extraordinary independent film about a 6-year-old girl in coastal Louisiana who copes with a mentally unstable father, survives a flood, and searches for her long-lost mother, is being reissued this week.
It will open Friday, Jan. 18, at the Tivoli in the Delmar Loop.
"Beasts of the Southern Wild" has been nominated for four Academy Awards, including best picture.