Technical assessment: 3.5
Moral assessment: 2
CINEMA Rating: A 18
MTRCB Rating: R 13
Gansgter Squad is set in post-war Los Angeles, USA, 1949. A truly vile gangster Mickey Cohen
(Sean Penn) wants complete control of the city, owning perennial money pots—the
dope and sex trades. To turn LA
into his private empire, Cohen has got half of LA’s cops by the balls, so to
speak, plus a couple of contacts in high places. The police chief, William Parker (Nick Nolte) is hot on dousing
cold water on Cohen’s fire, by all means.
So he taps another Cohen-hater, the intensely idealistic World War II
veteran Sgt. John O’Mara (Josh Brolin) after he proves himself incorruptible.
O’Mara
handpicks the “gangster squad” who will work under the radar to bring Cohen
down: fellow war veteran Sgt. Jerry Wooters (Ryan Gosling); sharpshooter Max
Kennard (Robert Patrick) and his sidekick Navidad Ramirez (Michael Pena);
Afro-American tough cop Coleman Harris (Anthony Mackie); and wiretapper Conway
Keeler (Giovanni Ribisi). Although
off to a cartoonish start, the mystery team scores success after success in
sabotaging Cohen’s establishments, getting enough media mileage to provoke
Cohen into waging a full blown war against his secret, unidentified saboteurs. Things get sticky when the slickster
Wooters seduces Cohen’s babe Grace Faraday (Emma Stone)—and the two fall in
love, trysting right under Cohen’s nose.
The trailer may be
promising due to its stylish veneer, but don’t let that fool you. Gangster Squad opens with Cohen’s rival chained in all
fours to two cars that run off in opposite directions, tearing the guy in two,
like a frog in a science lab.
Eeeeeeoow! Expect more gore
and guts spilling in most of the 113 minutes of slick killing and amusing
vintage car chases. You can’t ask
anything more from a cast that features two-time Oscar winner Sean Penn (whose
sterling performance, by the way, should elicit visceral reactions from the
audience); three Oscar nominees (Brolin, Gosling and Nolte); and one of the
sizzling-est stars in Hollywood these days, Emma Stone. Stone’s character is thinly-drawn,
though, making her look like a high school kid in homemade Laureen Bacall
gowns. Gangster Squad is fast paced, well shot, well written and should appeal
to movie fans of that genre.
You have to be a
hopeless or an idealistic fool to want to be part of a vigilante squad like
this one. As always with this kind
of story where do-gooders are tunnel-visioned about their targeted villain, the
question is: does the end justify the means? Are their ways moral?
Legal? Is justice
served? If you must watch it,
watch it with prudence and discernment.
Immature audience will surely get lost in its tangled (un)ethical web.
