Gangster Squad film review

Gangster Squad is a slick, confident, cheeky-but-funny man of a movie.  So, for many people it will prove irresistibly sexy - or was that just Ryan Gosling?  He certainly steals the screen for much of the film, despite Josh Brolin's best efforts to give his GI Joe character some spark.

Of all the qualities that make Gangster Squad so watchable, enjoyable and ultimately satisfying, the one that shouts at me the loudest is that it is slick.  The idiom-filled dialogue is slick.  The clean lines of the sets and costumes are slick.  The transitions from intimate dialogue to gunfire and car chasing are slick.  With so much slickness, it runs the risk of being overproduced, and lacking soul.  Perhaps its soul suffers at times, but there are enough honest moments between husband and wife, father and son, and brothers in arms that Gangster Squad emerges as the full package: smooth, polished gold.  If you're thinking that smooth, polished gold sounds boring, I'll draw your attention the to the gem it contains: Sean Penn is a diamond, so rough it may be partly coal.  But coal, too, can sparkle - and how his performance sparkles!  His King of the underbelly is robust and terrifying, a chiseled brute both fiery and heartless.  I love to see actors create characters unlike any in their past repertoire, and Penn had me again in awe of his abilities.

So, I loved the film and I recommend it but there were a few features that got me analysing the direction in which Hollywood is heading, and what that says about the world we live in.  Gangster Squad's violence is graphic and gruesome.  Its saving grace is that it is also rather inventive.  It seems this is the trend that first came to mainstream audiences via Tarantino and has since been welcomed into franchises such as 007 and Batman, as well as stand-alone hits like Drive.  I don't enjoy seeing bloody, realistic deaths.  I've grown somewhat desensitised to it and I can handle it - but that makes me sad.  I do not watch a lot of action films - James Bond bores me and superheroes annoy me - yet even I have grown used to seeing realistic violence on screen.  Is it possible this doesn't translate into more violent tendencies among frequent viewers?  I don't believe that for a moment.  I should give credit where it's due, though: this film had scenes re-shot to replace a scene that closely resembled the tragic Aurora shooting.  But to display violence vividly, and just skirt around anything that may link it to a specific situation, looks a little like taking the gate off its hinges after the horse has bolted.  "What gate?"

This film also got me thinking about women's roles in film.  It's a common enough gripe that there are not enough interesting roles for women and that those roles we have are written by men anyhow.  Well...I thought things were getting better.  Modern films and tv shows give women more power than ever before and we are seeing characters never before shown on screen.  No longer must women be only wives or whores. This made it only more noticeable that the large cast of Gangster Squad included only two women - neither of them particularly interesting characters.  It got me thinking that by setting things in a bygone era, writers are just providing for themselves an excuse for avoiding interesting female roles.  There's more to it than that, I know, but I do think it contributes to the popularity of placing stories in an historical setting.

Of course, I am not naive enough to expect Hollywood to take a moral stand on these issues and censor itself.  I am aware, though, of the ever-increasing influence Hollywood has over the minds and attitudes of younger generations and it disturbs me.

See this film if you are a fan of The Gosling, war heroes, or LA Confidential.