EXPENSIVE, STYLIZED, AND SHOCKINGLY unsurprising, Gangster Squad recounts the famous 1949 war between rogue LA cops (Brolin, Gosling, Patrick, Ribisi) and fledgling mobster Mickey Cohen (Penn). There’s exactly one damsel in distress (Stone), a few stereotypes (Peña, Mackie), and a slew of deftly realized mob movie cliché, but that’s about it.
I guess that isn’t totally unexpected. The hollow cinematic space between holiday Oscar contenders and summer blockbusters is given to films that don’t usually perform very well. We critics are inundated with brainless comedies and gimmick-riddled horror flicks. Every so often an indie (My Big Fat Greek Wedding, 2002) or foreign film (Let the Right One In, 2008) can get noticed, but it’s rare.
Gangster Squad was originally slated to be a summer 2012 blockbuster, released a couple weeks after The Dark Knight Rises. The shootings in Aurora, Colo., necessitated the move to this filmic dead zone, because Gangster Squad is a very violent film.
Still, I doubt it would’ve performed much better in summer. Fantastic actors were drawn to the noir style. Director Reuben Fleischer (Zombieland) gives many nods to ’40s gangster flicks without being hemmed in by that style. However, what couldn’t be added – because it’s just never there in the script – is any sense of depth or shocking twists.
In fact, it’s so average that I’ve spent half of this review talking about other Hollywood stuff.
Have you ever heard one of those well-meaning music medleys where the skill is there, but the combination of tunes is just confusing? Welcome to the movie version.
Writer David Chase – the creator of TV mobsters The Sopranos – apparently has another dozen stories to tell about New Jersey. In his directorial debut, he offers a slightly fictionalized account of how music saved his life in the 1960s. Meanwhile everything else happened, also.
Standing in for Chase is Magaro, whose character we don’t really get to know well, despite the film covering five years. He was the drummer and then lead singer in a band. Clouding up his main story is an unhappy dad (Gandolfini), a hard-ass in a strained marriage. The musician’s girlfriend (Heathcote) is a feminist with a sister suffering from either drug problems or mental illness – we’re never quite sure. The other band members also have issues. The musician’s younger sister is apparently writing a five-year-long school essay about the whole shebang.
The Beatles and Rolling Stones changed people’s lives; we know that cliché.
Still, the sets and costuming make for some nifty nostalgia, and the tunes are fun. Too bad the rest is so frustrating, fragmented and lacking drive.
Not Fade Away would’ve been much improved if Chase had chosen one story, one song, and one or two main characters instead of all those years, his whole record collection, and the entire neighborhood.
Geriatric mobster humor: did we really need this? I love the past works of these actors, but this far-fetched crud is not worth their Shakespearean gravitas.
Pacino, Walken and Arkin were mob buddies in the 70s and 80s. When a job went wrong, Pacino accidentally killed the mob boss’s son. He takes the rap, getting 28 years in prison. This isn’t enough for the boss. The vindictive prick hires Walken to sit around and wait for Pacino’s release. On Pacino’s first free day in decades, he is going to be killed by his only friend.
They’re all pushing 70. Also, none of them are interesting, likable or watchable.
Instead, they joke with each other as they rob pharmacies for Viagra and Cialis – hilarious. They also visit campy prostitutes, bust their friend out of a nursing home, try to pick up college-age women, and dig a big hole in a graveyard (which I was hoping they’d all fall into and die).
I shouldn’t forget to mention the tired 70s filming, the old fart gags, the dick jokes, the unbelievable violence, and the light jabs at each other as Walken works up the nerve to kill Pachino.
This crass farce is delivered like its pure mob poetry. It’s crap. We all know how this is going to end. Still, I was kind of hoping Walken would just shoot Pacino immediately, let the credits roll, and put us all out of our miseries.
