Back in 2009, Ruben Fleischer made his directorial film debut with one of the best movies in the zombie sub-genre with the refreshingly hilarious and fun Zombieland. Probably my favorite zombie movie of all time. Fleischer treated it with really fun unconventional visuals (like zombie-rules being posted on screen, pianos dropping on zombies, etc.) and the ability to command great chemistry between his ensemble. (Oh yeah. And Bill Murray's brilliant cameo certainly didn't hurt!) Under his guidance, the film garnered a 90%--most of the reviews praising his direction--on Rotten Tomatoes and $102 mil worldwide, on a budget of about $25 mil. It was the promise of a budding, brilliant career from a very strong visual director with a good sense for comedic timing. Fleischer has had 2 movies since Zombieland. And all I have to say is...
What the hell happened???
Between the terrible 30 Minutes or Less and this, I suppose the fanfare was premature. Once upon a time Gangster Squad was set to be released in September 2012. Most September movies aren't great, but they're typically not as bad as films released in January, when some of the worst films on a studio's slate are tragically dumped. Then the release date got shifted to January. And guess what folks--it lives up to the title of January crap-fest.
The movie has a shoe-string thin plotline--The LAPD puts together an off-the-books ragtag group of vigilante misfits to take down Mickey Cohen (Sean Penn), a ruthless mafia boss/former boxer who's slowly but surely tightening his control over the City of Angels in the 1940s. That's it.
Now a movie like this with a plotline so limited can be easily salvageable if the movie is fun. But Gangster Squad is so boggled down with cheesy cliches, over-the-top ridiculous acting (particularly on the scene-chewing Penn's part), that the amount of bland, recycled action sequences that occur just don't compensate for the clumsy, half-assed approach to filmmaking that Fleischer has on display for 2 hours. And I'm not asking for the film to be new or innovative, but literally every second of the film seems to be ripping off a better film before it--particularly De Palma's The Untouchables. The final shoot out in Cohen's hotel is essentially a rip off of the infamous staircase shootout (minus the bouncing baby carriage of course).
In fact, if you even break down the individual members of the Gangster Squad, we're treated to lame knockoffs of the exact members of the Untouchables. We split Kevin Costner's Eliot Ness into the tough no-nonsense straight arrow beat cop (Josh Brolin's character) and handsome, slick, emotional younger cop (Ryan Gosling). The team has an intelligence man (Giovani Ribisi) who figures out Cohen's schemes through his genius, but ends up biting it midway through, just like accountant Wallace from The Untouchables. And they have 2 sharpshooters--an aged veteran (Robert Patrick), and a newbie Latino gunman in training (Michael Pena)--obviously variations of Andy Garcia and Sean Connery's characters. And of course, Sean Penn--revered acting veteran--playing a tough as nails, ruthless murdering gangster--shades of them trying to copy DeNiro's Al Capone.The only characters without real doppelgangers from the Untouchables are Emma Stone's character and Anthony Mackie's. Stone's trying hard to fit the 40's femme fatale persona, and does a good job of it. It's just a pity the rest of the movie isn't trying as hard as she is. While Anthony Mackie's character is merely there as a token black guy who's good with knives. There really isn't anything further with his character other than that.
Apart from the fact that the characters were ripoffs, the movie itself is ridiculously cheesy. It's also schizophrenic. Allow me to explain both. Cheesy: We are treated to such sloppy, terrible writing. Characters spit out lines like "When I came here I was nothing,back home I was a gangster, now I'm GOD" or "We're not solving a case here. We're going to war!" Everything in the film is a ridiculous cliche of obvious lines without a sense of originality or intelligence. There's even a terrible scene where Ryan Gossling's decides it's time for vengeance against Mickey Cohen because of the "tragic" death of his shoeshine boy street sidekick. Pathetic. Schizophrenic: The movie doesn't know if it wants to be serious or not. We start out with some pretty grisly violence. Then it randomly veers into some unnecessarily slapstick scenes of the Gangster Squad's failed attempts at a casino robbery and a jail break. Moments like this completely do not fit with the tone of the rest of the movie. So the whole time, we, the audience, are left wondering whether this is supposed to be a pulpy noir-ish mobster movie, ala Untouchables, or a semi-parody of the genre due to the hilariously idiotic choices made by characters.
Just to go off on a minor tangent, what's really disappointing is the terrible screenplay is written by the man who's contracted to do the Justice League movie (first-timer, Will Beal). Dear lord, I can only imagine how terrible that's going to be now.
But I digress. The only real saving grace of the movie, maybe, is the look and art direction. It really does fit in with the best neo-noir pulp films set in the 1940s. But unfortunately, good visuals does not a good movie make--and they're not even that great, as far as most movies nowadays are concerned.
All in all, there's really not a whole lot about this movie that's redeemable. The whole thing is a trite exercise in Monkey-See, Monkey-Do. I mean seriously, I'm a fan of "turn your brain off" fun blockbuster types, but it's more fun when it's something you haven't seen before, or at least has a serviceable story I can get behind. When it's almost an exact replica of another, superior movie beat for beat, only done in a much poorer way, it's simply a waste of time, money, and talent.
Overall Rating: D+
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