Gangster Squad.
Let me just start by saying this. Gangster Squad is not a
great film. It has been savaged by critics and in some regards, I’d say that’s
justified. But allow me to play Devil’s advocate here and explain to you good
people why I actually quite enjoyed it. I sat down in the cinema expecting a
mediocre neo-noir gangster flick, which is precisely what I got. Well, perhaps
mediocre is a bit generous. The film begins heavily clichéd and for the first
half an hour or so that’s the way it stays. Honestly, I was sat there rolling
my eyes so much and whispering “for fuck sake” my face began to ache. There are echoes of films like L.A Confidential… well not so much
echoes as director Ruben Fleischer grabbing you by the lapels and screaming “REMEMBER
L.A CONFIDENTIAL YA FUCKING MOOK? WOULDN’T YA RATHER BE WATCHING L.A
CONFIDENTIAL? I KNOW I WOULD!” as he no doubt would, what with his clear
juvenile fascination and hero worship of gangsters. The characters are
unbelievably two dimensional, a veritable smorgasbord of old timey Hollywood clichés.
Here we have the stoic, plays by the book tough guy, the Ladies man Hollywood anti-hero,
the out and out evil bastard (who I will discuss in more depth shortly) and then
interestingly, what appears to be a femme fatale. The only problem is with the first three they
stay exactly this way and don’t seem to learn a fucking thing from the events
of this film and as for the latter, it transpires she isn’t really anything.
Just a “pair of ginger nipples” as I overheard somebody in the theatre describe
her. By this point it was obvious I wasn’t going to get a modern day Once Upon A Time In America or The Godfather and this slightly sinking
feeling and realisation actually made me more open to what this film was.
It dawned on me during one particular sequence involving
Mr Ryan Gosling that I wasn’t here to see a gangster film, I was here to see an
action film dressed up as a gangster film. This made me immediately start to
enjoy the film more. In fact I quite liked the idea that a brash, no brainer
action movie was set in 1940’s Los Angeles. It’s such an iconic setting that so many earnest and serious films have
taken place in, it was nice to see this dumb as a box of frogs knock about
insanity completely throw that to one side. I liked Dion Beebe’s cinematography.
The film looks glossy and not altogether real. I like this, I think this is
what film noir would look were it made today. As the film went on I suspended
my disbelief, chose to ignore the absurdity of the action that was taking place
and accept this as what it was, Die Hard with raincoats and Fedora’s.
I’ve not been the
first to draw parallels between Gangster Squad and L.A Confidential, but to me
there is another film that this picture warrants comparison with and that is
Brian De Palma’s 1987 crime caper, The
Untouchables. Both, set in the past, in supposed ‘golden days’ of gangland.
Both, ostensibly based on true stories (though Gangster Squad has definitely
used some poetic license). The reason I choose The Untouchables is because that
film was a critical success. Whereas Gangster Squad has been trashed so
thoroughly that it’s just about certain no one will still be talking about it
in 26 years. This owes to all manner of things from the writing to the
direction but what I want to focus on are the characters and the acting. In The
Untouchables, Elliot Ness (Kevin Costner) assembles a crack team of
incorruptible racial minority police officers (in this case Irish and Italian,
all of them mavericks) to try and take down Al Capone (Robert De Niro) in
prohibition era Chicago. In Gangster
Squad John O’Mara (Josh Brolin) assembles a crack team of incorruptible racial
minority police officer (in this case Black, Mexican and, weirdly there’s a
cowboy there too) to try and take down Micky Cohen (Sean Penn) in 1940’s Los
Angeles. If you are sat there thinking ‘well
that must make for two similar films’, you’d be dead fucking wrong, you fucking
idiot. While The Untouchables is calm and measured, albeit a bit PG, Gangster
Squad screams “Nah fuck that” and dives bare-chest into a freezing ocean of
lunacy. The men we have playing our villains here may be partially responsible
for that. In The Untouchable, the inimitable Robert De Niro plays Capone as a
sadistic and menacing psychopath, but above all he is believable. It’s an
authentic and interesting juxtaposition to Costner’s whiter than white Elliot
Ness. In Gangster Squad, we have Sean Penn’s pantomime turn as Micky Cohen. I
tried to look for positivity in this performance but he will go down in history
as the Widow Twanky in the gangster movie rogues gallery. My dislike of Sean
Penn on a personal level isn’t a secret amongst those who know me, what with
his misguided and unwanted comments on the Falkland Islands, as well as his
other assorted incidents of douchebaggery over the years. But I’ve always sort
of respected him on a professional level. For example, I was one of the five
people that really liked I am Sam.
But his performance as Micky Cohen is just… mind-bending. It’s a shambling, clichéd
and two dimensional representation of a thoroughly interesting character.
Cohen, a Jewish mobster who grew to be respected, some would even say feared by
the Cosa Nostra. He was no doubt a twisted individual, but I’m sure there was a
lot more to him than just being a shambling thug, but that’s another story for
another time.
Maybe it’s
because I’ve been playing so many video games lately, but despite all of the
above, I enjoyed Gangster Squad. It’s silly and absurd, just like a video game.
In fact there is one part where they are pinned down by a machine gunner and one
of the officers genuinely says “one of us has to take out that gunner”. To anyone
who plays their fair share of Xbox, that is a very recognisable scenario, the
boring fiddly bit before you get to take out the level boss. Look, I think most
people will enjoy Gangster Squad, just don’t turn up expecting Coppola, because
you’re about to be served a dish of delightfully insane Michael Bay silliness.
