Gangster Squad: NR #36

So the Academy Awards were on last night... Not much to really say except thank god "Argo" came out on top. Also it's January, the Hollywood dumping ground, so we get bad to mediocre stuff. Which one is this week's film? Guess you'll have to find out in my review of...

PLOT
Los Angeles in 1949 has been taken over by the mafia, specifically Micky Cohen, who has paid off most of the cities government workers and has been ruthless in his attempt to keep Chicago out of his city. The one cop he's yet to influence is Sgt. John O'Mara who believes in justice and freedom more than he does in life. Chief of police, Chief Parker, assigns O'Mara a squad to fight against the mafia, but they'll be unprotected by the law. O'Mara then recruits 5 people to go to war with Cohen and crew.





PROS
Sean Penn is great in this film as Mickey Cohen. He actually seems scary and pulls the film along as a whole.

The action scenes are done very well with a lot of style, flair, and blood thrown in for good measure.


CONS
We never really get to know the Gangster Squad. We know Josh Brolin and Ryan Goslings' characters just fine, it's the other four guys we don't know. In fact, the Black and Latino characters are just that, Black and Latino guys, they have no personalities or aspirations, they're just sorta there.

Emma Stone is completely pointless and has nothing to do but look beautiful until the end. She and Ryan Gosling have a relationship that starts out as just casual until the next time we see them they've become completely devoted to each other entirely out of the blue.

The film is extremely cliched with horrible dialogue and plot points and deaths that couldn't be more telegraphed.


CONCLUSION
While I do have more CONS than PROS, I still enjoyed this movie. It had some fun moments and was entertaining, but it's not something I'm going to remember next week, in fact I've already started to forget a lot of the film. Overall, it's like a fun pulp novel, but those novels are under $5, not worth seeing in the theater, but maybe on DVD. Come back next Sunday for a new review!


RATING
RENTABLE

Like this review? Why not check out last week's review of the Alfred Hitchcock classic "Rope"? http://newandclassicreviews.blogspot.com/2013/01/rope-cr-26.html

Wanna know what my favorite movies of 2012 were? Well check'em out: http://newandclassicreviews.blogspot.com/2012/12/my-top-10-movies-of-2012.html