An indirect victim of the horrid Aurora, Colorado shooting, Ruben Fleischer's Gangster Squad was quickly scrapped from its planned September 7 release date, instead being pushed into the new year. Now, complete with a slight edit, the film is set to hit theaters nationwide, where Mickey Cohen and his mob gang run the town of Los Angeles, 1949.
While I was original questioning the decision to move the film to January, just outside of the potential Oscar qualifying window, I now know that while classically shot with creative lenses and a unique style, it wasn't an Oscar-caliber film. That isn't to say that it was bad, it just wasn't anything extraordinary.
Sean Penn and Josh Brolin star as mob king Mickey Cohen and LAPD outsider Sgt. John O'Mara respectively. Sitting on opposite sides of the law, O'Mara leads a group of cops against the high and almighty. But the road isn't easy as Cohen has most of the city's protectors on his personal payroll, leading even the most honest of men to fall in line for fear of leaving their wife a widow.
Though visually creative, the story that surrounds the "Squad" is anything but spectacular. Sure, the fight scenes were a thrill and the highly secretive disruption quite comical, but the film is overly violent, humorously cliché, and predictable to a absolute fault. While the film can choose to hide behind its "based on a true story" tag line, at its root, it just a basic mobster movie with a semi-realistic quality.
Emma Stone, God love her, is completely miscast as the love interest of Gosling's Wooters and the girlfriend of Cohen. Her role proves pivotal during the later stages of the film as Cohen becomes obsessive over his entire entourage, working hard to unearth the snitch who he believes is rating out his money projects. But as for the rest of the star-studded cast, everyone delivers as the males share an unusual chemistry, bringing a sense of camaraderie to the drama.
But the occasional moments of greatness are weighed down by the shallow and superficial presentation of generic LA noir. Fleisher ultimately squandered away a brilliant cast and explosive material to deliver a feature that pulls a bit too much from The Untouchables--and as that title would suggest, that just doesn't cut it.
