Review by:
Andrew Welch

What does it say about Gangster Squad that its best dialogue exchange comes not from screenwriter Will Beall, but from Abbott and Costello’s 1941 comedy Hold That Ghost? (The lines: “I play Post Office.” “Post Office? That’s a kid’s game.” “Not the way I play it.”) On the one hand, it says Beall and director Ruben Fleischer wanted to make a movie that paid homage to the movies of 1940s and ’50s; on the other, it signifies the creative and moral bankruptcy that dogs it from beginning to end.

John Brolin turns in a lifeless performance as as Sgt. John O’Mara, a Los Angeles cop who’s asked by the chief of police (Nick Nolte) to form a special, off-the-books squad that will take on unstoppable Jewish boxer-turned-gangster Mickey Cohen (a wildly over-the-top Sean Penn). O’Mara fills out his group with a band of banal characters played by Ryan Gosling, Giovanni Ribisi, Anthony Mackie, Michael Peña and Robert Patrick, all of whom seem more or less happy to have the paycheck. The group’s goal isn’t to kill Cohen, but to do as much damage to his outfit as possible.

On a formal level, Fleisher does himself no favors by shooting the movie on digital cameras; the historical production design and costumes don’t mix well with the sparkling clarity of digital, with the result that you’re more aware of Gangster Squad as a movie than you would be if it had been shot on grainy film or even in black-and-white. The real issues with the film run deeper than its failed classical-Hollywood homages, however. Some viewers will be reminded of a more recent crime drama while watching Gangster Squad: Brian De Palma’s 1987 film The Untouchables. But where the men of that film used violence as a last resort, the characters of Fleischer’s film relish any opportunity they have to rough up Cohen’s thugs. Their bloodlust turns what at first seems like an expensive B-movie into an aggressively distasteful example of Hollywood at its worst. One could see in this film an endorsement of the National Rifle Association’s recent, and very troubling, position that the best way to fight the bad guys isn’t by thinking creatively about intensely moral problems, but by instead giving the good guys more guns.

This is especially abhorrent given the spate of mass shootings our country has experienced over the past few months. When O’Mara and his gang shoot and punch their way through Cohen’s newest operation, we’re supposed to cheer for them as they stamp out crime, but their actions look too much like the atrocities of Newtown, Conn., shooter Adam Lanza and Aurora, Colo., perpetrator James Holmes. The movie’s post-World War II setting ostensibly provides us with a context for their actions, but this is merely a pretext for the movie’s violent indulgences. Only Ribisi’s character “gets it;” as the brainy one of the group, he’s also the only one with a conscience. “Can you remind me of the difference between us and them?” he asks O’Mara. As punishment for doubting “the American way,” however, he becomes the movie’s redshirt.

Gangster Squad was originally scheduled for release in the latter half of 2012, but was pushed back in the wake of the Aurora movie-theater shooting. Now, coming on the heels of the Sandy Hook tragedy, it doesn’t look any better than it would have then. Gangster Squad is not only silly and slapdash, but also truly repugnant. Haven’t we all grown tired of passively cheering on intimidation and slaughter by now? Somewhere, I hope Fleischer and company are regretting this one, even just a little.