Gangster Squad (2013)

Gangsters are cool. They’ve been a staple of Hollywood movies since the beginning of the idea of blockbuster filmmaking. They were so cool that in the 30s it was a genuine governmental concern that audiences maybe thought a little too highly of them. Modern gangster movies are usually exercises in style over substance, basing their stories at the beginning of the century in the era where such stories were at their prime. Last year, there was just such a movie that managed to have both style and substance. That movie was Lawless and I truly thought it was one of the better movies of the year. The new action hit Gangster Squad is like the anti-Lawless. It gets everything very, very wrong.

This failure shouldn’t be too surprising since it comes from director Ruben Fleischer, whose last effort was the sickening comedy 30 Minutes or Less. This movie isn’t quite as atrocious as that one, but there is little about it that can be praised. An all-star cast, including Josh Brolin, Ryan Gosling, Emma Stone, Nick Nolte and a scenery-chewing Sean Penn, is featured in a cookie-cutter plot made up of a million clichés that drags its feet from lack of drive. The writing here is really flimsy, often resorting to unfunny jokes to distract us from its overall emptiness. Characters are introduced with one obvious trait each to help us remember who they are, and we are then offered no additional personality or motivation of any kind. Most of the actors seem bored as their director ignores them in favor of big set pieces, montages and increasingly obnoxious slow-motion sequences. Any chemistry Gosling and Stone had in Crazy Stupid Love is forgotten here as they sleepwalk through a romance that is far from convincing. The only exception to the rule is Penn who gives his role much more energy than it deserves.

The only thing Gangster Squad actually gets right is its art design, which is probably the reason people like the darn thing so much. I admit the movie looks very nice, but of what use is a good-looking movie that falters in every other department? It can’t even deliver in terms of mere action, with such scenes being executed with a sloppiness that becomes laughable. The final shoot-out especially suffers from terrible staging disguised as exciting by flashy editing. In the end, the movie accomplishes nothing and even those who enjoyed it in the moment will soon forget all about it. It is only appropriate that movies like this open a new year. Oscar season is over. It’s time to lower those expectations.

On a side note, there has been much talk about how a scene involving gunfire in a movie theater was cut due to the Dark Knight Rises incident last year. The gunfire has now been moved to a nightclub, in addition to several other moments of graphic violence. How sensitive of them.

4/10