Gangster Squad (2013)

Starring: Josh Brolin, Ryan Gosling, Sean Penn, Emma Stone, Nick Nolte, Anthony Mackie, Giovanni Ribisi, Robert Patrick, Michael Peña, and Frank Grillo
Grade: A

In the tagline, we see the last sentence say, “No mercy”. If you’ve seen Gangster Squad, you know there couldn’t be a better way to describe how things play out in this film.

Summary

In 1949 Los Angeles, Sgt. John O’Mara (Brolin) tells us the story of Mickey Cohen (Penn) through narration. Cohen was a Jewish gangster and former professional boxer that got the respect of the Italian community through his brutal ways of solving his problems. O’Mara is fresh out of serving in World War II and is disgusted at what Los Angeles has become, as he is very aware of Cohen and his goal of building a criminal empire. Right away, we see Cohen killing Chicago gangster Tommy Russo (Grillo) as a way to mark his territory. How does he do it? He has the man tied to two separate cars so when they drive in opposite directions, the body completely separates. He leaves the other guy alive, telling him to go back to Chicago to tell everyone what he saw concluding with, “You tell them that Los Angeles belongs to Mickey Cohen”.

Sometime later, we see O’Mara in action. He sees one of Cohen’s boys convince an innocent woman she has actress potential, and how he works for some Hollywood studio, so O’Mara follows them back to one of Cohen’s spots. The guy intends on raping her, along with several of his cohorts, but O’Mara busts in and saves the day by wiping the floor with everyone in the joint and saving the girl. He takes them back to the station where we see his laid-back co-worker and friend Sgt. Jerry Wooters (Gosling) telling him that he works too hard. O’Mara is immediately called into Lt. Quincannon’s (Jack McGee) office who gives him shit because O’Mara was told to stay away from Cohen’s turf. He also tells O’Mara that since he walked in there without a warrant, the three men who attempted the gang rape are going to get away with it. The news came straight from Judge Carter himself. Surprised at the response time from all of his superiors, O’Mara implies they’re working for Cohen and wonders the same (aloud) about Quincannon. As he watches Cohen’s boys walk out of the station, Jerry tries to convince him to not mess with Cohen’s guys as he drinks from his flask. Following this, O’Mara goes home to his pregnant wife Connie (Mireille Enos). She’s not too happy with him getting into such action, considering they have a kid on the way. They have a loving conversation, but she definitely lays down the law on him, wanting him to avoid his cowboy-like ways since they’re starting a family.

Back at the whorehouse Cohen is running, Cohen has all the men killed that let O’Mara waltz in and fuck them all up, burning down the place with them in the elevator. That night, we are introduced to the popular nightclub in town, “Slapsy Maxie’s”, a place Jerry frequents. After Jerry tells the shoeshine kid to go home, he meets with Jack Whalen (Sullivan Stapleton), a gangster and good friend of Jerry’s. After they mess around a bit, Jack tells him that Cohen is on the “warpath”. He then gives Jerry the lowdown of everyone on Cohen’s payroll, as they all hang out with Cohen at his table on the other side of the club. This includes Judge Carter and other higher-up officials. However, Jerry is more interested in Grace Faraday (Stone), Cohen’s social etiquette teacher and girlfriend. Despite Jack warning Jerry not to pursue because it will surely end in death, Jerry greets her as she leaves the table for a cigarette, showing us a masterclass in flirting while doing so. The next day, Chief Bill Parker (Nolte) is bothered by people asking what he’s going to do about Cohen. After seeing the details of the recent bust at Cohen’s whorehouse, he is shocked to find out O’Mara managed do it by himself. Because of this, Parker brings in O’Mara and wants him to recruit and lead a team to use guerilla warfare against Cohen to stop him, as it’s the only way to save Los Angeles. Currently, no one will testify against him, so they have to try something different. However, everything is off the books. He can’t make any arrests, and he can’t kill Cohen because someone else would just take his place. The goal is to shatter his operations and drive him out of the city, and O’Mara couldn’t accept the mission any faster.

As he looks through files of possible men to recruit, Connie interrogates him and flips out at the fact that he’s putting his life on the line once again. He’s able to quell things by asking for her help though. After we see Jerry and Grace in bed and her telling Jerry that Mickey will kill him if he finds out (and him not caring), we go back to O’Mara and Connie working together to try and put O’Mara’s team together. She argues that the guys they’ve been looking at would be easy to buy off by Cohen because they’re young and squeaky clean. What they need to find are guys that are rougher around the edges. Before he finds anyone else though, O’Mara goes to a strip club to try and convince Jerry to join him. Unfortunately, he’s still not interested. Later, “The Sheriff of Central Avenue” Lt. Coleman Harris (Mackie) becomes the first man to sign up. He’s a no-nonsense fighter much like O’Mara, who’s an expert at knife throwing. He can’t stand how rampant heroin is in his area, so O’Mara is able to convince him to join by saying they’re going straight to the source to stop it. Next is Max Kennard (Patrick). He’s an older sharpshooter who’s shooting exploits have been immortalized in small comics and is recruited at the behest of Connie. Family man and electronics expert Conwell Keeler (Ribisi) is added last.

Sometime later, Cohen meets with Jack Dragna (John Polito) at the club to discuss his killing of Tommy Russo and angering Chicago when he didn’t need to. At the same time, Jack Whalen asks Grace to leave Jerry alone, so he doesn’t get killed. Dragna’s warnings piss off Cohen mightily, and he tells Dragna that he’s outgrown his old ass and doesn’t need him anymore. Elsewhere, O’Mara debriefs his team about how they’re going to war and if they succeed, no one will know what they’ve done because they’re doing this discreetly. As he makes his speech, Kennard’s protégé Navidad Ramirez (Peña) interrupts, begging to join. They let him since he’s Kennard’s guy.

They head over to Cohen’s casino in Burbank to destroy the place and burn the money. However, when they break in, they end up in a firefight with fellow cops that were already there. They run out and a wild chase ensues, with O’Mara and Harris getting captured. They are interrogated. When they say nothing, they’re thrown into a cell. Over by Maxie’s, a drunk Jerry finally agrees to get his shoe shined by the younger kid. As the kid mentions how he heard Cohen is going to make a move on Jack Dragna, Dragna pulls up to the club with his wife. As this happens, Cohen and Grace dance inside the club. Jerry cuts the shoe shine short after seeing some of Cohen’s shooters get out of their car, and he tells the kid to go home. Immediately after, Cohen’s guys start unloading on Dragna, who manages to escape. The kid is caught in the crosshairs and is shot and killed. An emotional Jerry kills one of Cohen’s men and fires at another. He then storms Maxie’s with the full intention of killing Cohen on the dance floor and Grace sees him, but Jack Whalen stops him and throws him in the bathroom to talk some sense into him. He tells Jerry about the incident at the casino in Burbank and how they don’t know who did it, but two of them were apprehended and Cohen’s boys are coming for them soon. Knowing full well that O’Mara is one of them, Jerry switches gears and heads to Burbank.

As O’Mara and Harris wait in their cell and O’Mara manages to get his cuffs off, Kennard and Navidad plan to rip the bars off the window to save them, tying the bars to their car. At the same time, Jerry shows up and acts as if he’s one of Cohen’s guys to cleanly grab O’Mara and Harris as his “prisoners”. It works for a moment, but they end up in a huge fight after Cohen’s actual guys show up right after. Despite Kennard’s plan failing, they are still able to escape, winning the fight thanks to Keeler cutting the power and allowing them to fight in the dark.

With Jerry finally in tow, the team is complete and ready to go to war.

My Thoughts:

I loved Gangster Squad.

The cast is great, the action is awesome and excessively violent, and I’m a sucker for a cool, 1940s period film. A major criticism we’ve heard of the movie is that the characters are one-dimensional. I can see that argument. Admittedly, they aren’t too in-depth. For the most part, what you see is what you get. The only one with decent character development is Jerry Wooters. Even so, everyone plays their borderline stock characters so well that we don’t really care. Josh Brolin’s O’Mara is the no-nonsense cop who will recklessly stop at nothing to kill bad guys, Ryan Gosling’s Jerry is the smooth-talking alcoholic playboy, Giovanni Ribisi’s Keeler is the voice of reason with a family, Robert Patrick’s Kennard is the old dog looking for a fight, Michael Peña’s Navidad is the unproven but excitable rookie, Anthony Mackie’s Harris is a badass, Sean Penn’s Cohen is the ruthless kingpin, and Emma Stone’s Grace is the love interest caught in the middle of it all. Though I can describe them and their importance to the story with ease, they all pop out in the film like a comic book, making their one-note characters a lot of fun and welcomed pieces to the action. Though some say they are “thinly-written”, they tried to emulate the old-timey gangster films from the 30s and 40s and did it well. When you think about it, those movies lived on these exact archetypes. Sure, the better one’s had a little bit more character development, but what we see in Gangster Squad isn’t far off from it. If you look at it in this sense, the film really nailed the recreation of the time period, including the movies from that era. At the same time, the violence was massively upgraded to appeal to modern audiences and action fans, and might I say, they did an awesome job in doing so.

Is this film essentially a more brutal but less successful version of The Untouchables? Yeah, I could see that too. The similarities are evident:

1. John O’Mara vs. Eliot Ness. Both guys were asked to lead a team to stop major gangsters in real life.
2. Max Kennard vs. Jimmy Malone. Both are the older guys vital to the chemistry of the group.
3. Navidad Ramirez vs. George Stone. They are both unproven but prove to be important members to the squad. You could even argue Stone is also comparable to Coleman Harris, especially with his shooting skills being just as impressive as Harris’s is with a knife.
4. Conwell Keeler vs. Oscar Wallace. They are both the nicer, more innocent guys with undeserved fates.
5. Mickey Cohen vs. Al Capone. Both are real gangsters portrayed as tyrannical, unhinged maniacs who are also celebrities in their communities.

The only real difference is the level of violence. Though I’m sure if The Untouchables was made in the modern era, it probably would’ve been just as violent, if not more. Besides that, all I can really think of is the fact that the “Gangster Squad” O’Mara was asked to put together was supposed to be secret, while Ness made his mission public.

In terms of film quality, I’ve seen both movies and though The Untouchables is an undeniable classic, I still really enjoyed Gangster Squad. The shootouts, the chases, and the battle of a good guy team taking on a monstrous mobster villain in an all-out war is loads of fun. Have we seen movies like this before? Sure, but that doesn’t make this one any less exciting. I like when the good guys get their hands a little dirty and fight “fire with fire” too. Though the inevitable argument coming from Keeler was expected, questioning how what they’re doing is different from the bad guys since they’re being just as violent as them, but it needs to be said that sometimes, you have to push further. If you play too nice, people walk all over you. In the case of Mickey Cohen, he practically owns the city. You have to fight dirty to make a difference.

Is that the right message to send? In some cases, yes.

We see this message front and center when dealing with the fate of Keeler. Though it may not be the traditional clean-cut hero response, it’s a much more realistic (and satisfying) approach. Now, I can’t say I didn’t see it coming from a mile away, but it was still welcomed. It can be overdone in the basic revenge thriller but in certain cases (like here for example) in can be quite exciting. In addition, I liked the added element of our core heroes being war veterans and how differently it has affected the both of them. O’Mara has to be told by his wife, “The war is over! Stop fighting”. Unfortunately, that violent side of him is ingrained in his skull. His no-nonsense style as a cop is his only outlet from the war. All he needs is a reason to know he’s doing the right thing, much like how he got during his time fighting for the United States, and he’s golden. Did you see his face light up when Chief Parker gives him the official mission? This is exactly what he wanted and needed to satisfy his warmongering urges. Josh Brolin looks and plays the tough war veteran part very well. He looks and feels like someone who has legitimate military experience. His performance was rough, tough, and commanding, channeling a bit of Tommy Lee Jones and Nick Nolte in the role, and it works wonders.

While we’re on the subject, if this movie came out in the 80s or 90s, I could totally see Nick Nolte playing the lead.

On the other side of the fun is the ultra-cool Jerry Wooters, the veteran who’s on vacation mode at all times. He’s dejected from life and resorts to drinking to keep his calm demeanor. Though he’s a cop, he tells O’Mara at every turn to avoid Cohen before the team is created. He straight-up tells him now that the war is over, “We don’t have to fight anymore”. He’s far removed from that life and he’s happy to come to terms with it, being the polar opposite of O’Mara. They have such different philosophies on life, despite coming out of the same situation, but both are driven to violence because Mickey Cohen’s actions forcing their hand. Sure, Jerry needed a little coercing to wake up, but he gets locked in to protect the one’s he loves. Once he has that reason to be involved, he’s more focused than anybody. They couldn’t do it without him either. He’s the only one that can speak some sense into O’Mara, who tends to go everywhere guns blazing because he refuses to back down to anyone (to a fault).

The romantic angle of Jerry and Grace was excellent. It added a lot of excitement and was the perfect detour to the main story at hand. There was just enough sultriness to keep things interesting but not enough to take away from the action, which is what we came for. It’s just enough to work. For example, there’s the excellent scene when Jerry breaks into Cohen’s house with Keeler to bug the place, and they run into Grace. No words are spoken. Jerry just motions her to stay quiet, kisses her, and leaves. It’s such a great scene. Even in the potential face of death (because if they’re caught, this whole thing is blown), he’s still got time for his woman. It’s a very simple relationship angle but thoroughly entertaining for how much time is spent on it. Once again, the chemistry is top notch between Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone. We have now seen these two play lovers in three different features (this movie, Crazy, Stupid, Love, La La Land), and I have to say, they knock it out of the park every time. I loved it. I also hate to admit it, but Ryan Gosling was incredibly fucking cool in this film. He steals every scene he’s in with a cool line, a glance, or a tip from his fedora. Though he speaks in this odd cadence, he makes it work for the character. He’s too smooth. Honestly, I would watch a full-on spin-off about Jerry Wooters, or even Ryan Gosling playing a private investigator in the same time period. He’s that damn good.

Though the characterization of Mickey Cohen is very one-sided, presenting him as an evil bastard with no other wants or needs in life other than to have “more”, Sean Penn did a great job with the part. He felt like a cartoonish Dick Tracy-like villain, but it still worked in the context of the movie. He looked like a bloody maniac, and his aggressiveness onscreen gave us a larger-than-life presence that was needed to remind us why our heroes’ mission is so important. His barbaric ways of killing people were a nice touch too and fit the theme of uber violence portrayed in the movie. When he says, “You know the drill” to one of his henchmen, and they stick a literal drill into one guy’s head to kill him, you know you’re dealing with one terrible son of a bitch. It makes you want that final fight between Cohen and O’Mara so much more. When it happens, it’s worth the wait!

Yes, it’s a bit predictable. No, it’s not very historically accurate. However, Gangster Squad is one badass film. It’s a cool, stylish, 1940s-era action film with colorful characters, a great cast, awesome shootouts, car chases, and brutal mobster violence that make it rank high in the action film genre. It’s incredibly entertaining and though it may not win any screenplay awards or win points on originality, it’s absolutely delightful, nonetheless.