I love LA. This site is dedicated to that with things to do in this city and the wealth in culture, entertainment, business and so much more the cit has to offer. Gangster Squad shares nothing of that with this city. Gangster Squad's predictable reused plot, reused characters, invincible cops and odd use of LA as New York has me questioning what director Ruben Fleischer should be doing after Zombieland.
The story has Mickey Cohen played by the ugliest make-up job on Sean Penn controlling LA through crime after World War 2. Sean Penn's Mickey Cohen could be in the old Dick Tracy movie his make-up looked so bad. Getting to bad, a team of cops led by Josh Brolin and Ryan Gosling has to take back the city secretly and without the help of the corrupt police force. This team is built up of stereotypes of a thousand cop films. You have the tough leader, the smart alack Ryan Gosling whose always drinking orange soda, old time cowboy, token black guy, token Mexican guy and a guy whose meant to die for being weak. They go after Mickey in the laziest and dumbest ways possible.
The team goes on two missions before a montage of taken down Mickey's crime family that's boring as it's stupid. The bad guys have superior numbers and weapons, but these cops don't get shot or even hurt a little. A timed bomb is thrown at them during a car chase and the manage to pick it up and throw it behind them. The squad is suppose to be doing all their missions in secret, but they show their faces all the time after only one time their wore masks. Doesn't matter as all of them are near invincible unless predictable scenes occur and they get taken out.
Predictable or the same things I've seen before are the best ways to describe anything that happens in this film. Ryan Gosling's character doesn't want to be part of the squad. Oh, here's a reason, the crime war blood shed gets the shoe shine boy killed. Not that shoe shine boy that was only introduced to us to die. Then there's the rival gang boss who was so dumb he didn't get any protection or get to safety after being shot at in the same scenes that claimed the poor ol' shoe shine boy's life. Then there's scenes I've seen again and again in older films that did a better job with crime. The ending boxing fight between Brolin and Penn reminded me of a stupid video game Call of Duty clone that let you take down Osama Bin Laden with your fists. Childish and dumb is what is was.
The movie loves to throw out LA quips or locals like USA Network likes to throw out wide shots of beaches and Santa Barbra looking nice instead of content. The film seemed like it wanted to take place in New York, never was it an LA movie. Events took place in LA kind of. The squad kept using the line "over the river" to describe traveling across LA which no one ever says. I'll give them at the time maybe they said that, but it sounds like New Yorker talking when you say "on the other side of the river". It was never that sunny,except maybe for a bbq and the beach shows only up at the end in another repeated moment in cinema.
I hope someone does a clip of token black Gangster Squad member hating on Burbank. That was just funny. I might save it as a meme.
For any fan of crime or LA movies it's something to be missed. Just go watch any other crime movie.
Extra thoughts
-Mickey Cohen is the only person to ever eat food in the movie, bad guys only eat food for some reason
- Did it have to be Christmas at the end of the movie?
-Where did all those people come from at the end of the film to see the end of the fight between Brolin and Penn. It had to be really late at night and no one was walking on the street prior to the fight. Did a cameramen just happen to be in the area?
