The “Inspired by true events” preface prior to Gangster Squad should immediately warn us that what we are about to see is most likely improbable, fictional hyperbole, and historically inaccurate. In effect, it gives the filmmakers a license to use historical names like Mickey Cohen while distorting the events surrounding his existence. Sean Penn plays the mob boss who, in real life, was sent out to keep an eye on Bugsy Siegel. After Siegel’s death in 1947, Cohen essentially became the king of Los Angeles, and this is about where Gangster Squad begins, give or take a few years.
We’re set in 1949, where Los Angeles is a chaotic sea corruption. Most cops are on the take; the rest, like Jerry Wooters (Ryan Gosling) speak in a high-pitched, inconsistent lilt, and are indifferent to mob activity. They don’t condone it, but they don’t believe they can fight it. They work within the parameters of the law, but know that Cohen has judges and other officers in his pocket.
Then there’s John O’Mara (Josh Brolin), the archetypal “one good cop” bent on bringing Cohen down, no matter what the means. This is where Gangster Squad juxtaposes familiar depictions of violence: O’Mara’s attack on and murder of two mob goons who see his pistol are unjustified (in a law enforcement sense) but it’s more sedate than our introduction to Mickey who has a man’s arms and legs tied to two car bumpers ready to speed off in opposite directions. They do; his body is bisected across the waist; wolves eat his entrails; Mickey, snarling, asserts “Los Angeles belongs to” him.
Penn plays the nefarious villain brilliantly. (Accuracy could be up for debate.) A former boxer, Cohen is built like a bulldog. He snarls most of his lines, showing us what Rocky could have been if he were better at breaking thumbs. Throughout the film, Penn moves like a boxer, subtly bobbing and weaving through each scene. He punishes with impunity, but with the patience of tiring someone out through eight rounds. And then he strikes. It could be two cars after a monologue, immolation in an elevator cage, or a homemade lobotomy with a ¾” drill bit. Penn is by far the best part of this film. Even when his depiction of Cohen veers closer to that of a cartoonish villain, he keeps him in check and makes him frighteningly real.
The same can’t be said for the other characters that more closely resemble a group of disorganized superheroes learning to channel their powers. (Something further suggested in a “learn to shoot a gun while walking” training scene that boggles the mind considering that this squad is made up of supposedly trained officers, but I digress.) And this is where the film goes off track and reveals that it’s confused about its genre. It begins as a reimagining of the noir-style gangster movie, up on the cliffs that overlook Los Angeles. Cohen in his gray suit, growling and menacing, seething darkness.
Then everything is brilliantly colored as if the prop department just received shipments of yellows, reds, and blues. On the one hand, perhaps the filmmakers are creating a juxtaposition of beauty with chaos. On the other, it doesn’t work here. A city in shambles and writhing with corruption can’t be so aesthetically maintained. Everything is too clean, disconnecting power the tale could have about violence in a twentieth-century incarnation of the lawless west. But here Las Angeles becomes something out of a Dick Tracy comic strip.
And like a comic, the Gangster Squad has a square-jawed leader who will stop at nothing to bring in a crook, an expert in knife-wielding (and throwing), a pro gunslinger, and a genius. Together, they can’t be stopped! But they are more reminiscent of the band from Ocean’s Eleven than something out of The Untouchables. Even more annoying is that their supposed talents forecast the arc of the narrative, which leaves little suspense in an otherwise predictable film.
There are a couple spoilers below, so read at your own risk.
There are two additional aspects of Gangster Squad that sink the film. First, the history is wonky. While Cohen grabbed much of his power after the death of Siegel in 1947, he wasn’t captured until the 1950’s, which is after the time in which this film is set.
Furthermore, he wasn’t nabbed for murdering anyone. Like Capone, he was incarcerated on the charge of tax evasion. Yes, he went to Alcatraz, but the film’s epilogue suggests that he was murdered with a lead pipe shortly thereafter. This is incorrect. In truth, he was attacked with a lead pipe, but he didn’t die until 1970 – after a second incarceration for another charge of tax evasion.
The final annoyance within this film is the nefarious subtext about Cohen’s background. He’s a Jew. This was true in real life and emphasized in the film. The rub here is that the nation – at least the white hegemony that is running this Gangster Squad — seems endemically racist and ambivalent to fighting “savage Indians and Mexican bandits to win Los Angeles.” And many seem okay to the capital-generation conglomerate that is Las Vegas, gaining strength in the 1940’s and continuing to grow through the era in which this film is set.
They also seem fine with the juggernaut of Hollywood and the cultural influences therein as Cinema-slang and references to Ma and Pa Kettle dot the film.
They just don’t seem okay with a Jew running the only betting line. The violence portrayed covers this overt racism to a point and the zoomorphizing of Cohen doesn’t hurt, but fountain of vitriol toward Cohen – at least in the film – starts with his cultural background.
I don’t know if this was intentional, intentionally ignored, or just overlooked. Regardless, each hint at cohesive theme is underdeveloped and caught in a perfect storm of indecision.
Score: 35
