Title: Gangster Squad
Genre: Film
Grade: C-
Notable People: Josh Brolin, Ryan Gosling, Emma Stone, Sean Penn
Review: What should I say about this one. I love dark movies set in post war LA. Chinatown set the bar for this and many have tried to follow. This one is an amalgam of the two great special cop squad movies of our era- The Untouchables and LA Confidential. The film tries to take from both of these and simply comes out as a flat cliché of itself. You don’t even get the real feeling of LA in this time period from the shoot. Lots of automatic weapons and blood. Bad dialog, bad Mickey Cohen channeling (Penn), bad boys club motif. Brolin’s gang of rogue cops could really use Sean Connery and Kevin Spacey. Emma Stone is hot and Nick Nolte has a good little run as the stand up Police Chief. That’s it. I was pretty excited to see this- but I’d say catch it late at night on TV. Boo…. (Nate – does this make you feel better about the reviews?)