Rating: 2/5
by Brian Kesler
Set in 1940s Los Angeles, Gangster Squad follows a band of rogue police men who take it upon themselves to capture the most ruthless criminal in town, Mickey Cohen (Sean Pean). The good guys blow things up and walk toward the camera as flames bloom behind them. Their chief, played with much solemnity by Josh Brolin, gives standard "we're going in" speeches. Penn, as the hotheaded, Jewish kingpin, spends his time eating Lobster and mugging at cops in between his repeatedly dark metaphors and dangerous puns (when he tells a henchman, "You know the drill," the henchman literally pulls out an electric drill and drives it through a man's skull... clever... [note the sarcasm]). All of the puns and metaphors come complete with booming, dissonant chords for underscore. That's how you know his dialogue is really scary.
Of course, no Gangster film would be complete without a bombshell. The bombshell in this case is a red head, played by the beautiful Emma Stone. She is the property of the evil Cohen, but falls in love with one of the rogue cops - played by Ryan Gosling. Their plot is the most interesting if only for the tinge of development that these two actors manage to pull out of a less-than-generous screenplay. Gosling gives the best performance in the film, and it is of his own doing and not of the director's. If only the relationship between these two was given more room for exploration there might have been something beautiful between them.
Again, as with many recent films, this movie argues for vigilantism and bringing criminals to "justice" outside the boundaries of the law. Again, I will withhold criticizing the film for doing so, and merely reflect on it. There is a thirty second stretch of dialogue in which one character asks if the rogue police men are "doing the right thing." On second thought, I will criticize the film on the subject. If this thirty second piece of dialogue had been expanded as a major theme of the film, it would've had twice as much depth. But the movie doesn't explore it. The movie also never explores the implications of gun violence.
The debate is raging around us and it is evident that gun violence in Hollywood is glorified. But does it have a role in developing violent actions in people? I'd like to say no, but it still perturbs me the way in which guns are featured in the movies. Back in the '30s and '40s, any gun violence in a film had to be perpetrated by a bad guy and the bad guy then had to be brought to justice. Usually, this meant that the bad guy lets things get so out of control that it eventually leads to his own death. This was in the days of movie censorship. Of course, that is terribly one dimensional, and a good filmmaker will want to address thematic issues in complex light.
When censorship ended and the MPAA took over, there was a huge surge in anti-hero movies. 'Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,' 'Bonnie and Clyde,' 'Taxi Driver,' and 'The Godfather,' were all big Hollywood hits in which the protagonists were not virtuous, but villainous. It is worth noting, however, that their acts were given different perspective then the movie characters of today's filmmaking. Consider in 'Gangster Squad,' that every time someone shoots somebody else or pulls out a gun, it is filmed in a manner to make the audience think it is "cool." We see the results of violent acts long enough to get a thrill out of it, and then we are spared having to acknowledge that lives really do end when a bullet goes through someone's skull. There is no underlying theme pertaining to guns or the violence they are capable of.
As a comparative example: While people have claimed 'Taxi Driver' was responsible for the assassination attempt of President Reagan, it's very important to realize that director Martin Scorsese does not glorify the guns when anti-hero Travis Bickle purchases them, practices with them, or uses them. When he buys them, Scorsese pays special attention to the unsettling dialogue and focuses the camera on DeNiro's face. There is no music; there are no slick sound effects. When he is practicing with targets and finding ways to hide the weapons, Scorsese sets images of DeNiro's troubled eyes against Bernard Hermann's unhinging score. We then see the unwinding of Travis's mind in the famous "You talkin' to me?" scene (which has more character development in two minutes than 'Gangster Squad' has in two hours). And when Travis finally uses these destructive weapons, Scorsese lets us see and hear the results of his brutality with steady shots and zero musical score, so that we are forced to live the experience as it might actually happen. Scorsese then subjects us to a painfully slow overhead, panning shot (think Hitchcock) that forces us to look at the bloody trail of one man's arsenal. By the end of 'Taxi Driver,' Travis is treated as a hero, a vigilante who freed an underage prostitute from the grips of her pimp. But having been on the journey with Travis, we have to wonder if it's really a simple matter of heroism. This is a man who craves solitude, who is unable to connect with humanity, who constantly sees sin around him and yet can't help his cravings to go to pornographic movie theatres. He does kill the pimps and rescue the prostitute, but only after having a mental breakdown and failing to kill a prominent presidential candidate. Scorsese's last shot is of Bickle's eyes through the rear view mirror. Travis glances into the mirror, directly into the camera, for a brief moment and there is a skip in the music. We are left to wonder what chaos Travis is capable of and/or will commit in the future. That's how violence used to be portrayed in movies: with complexity. Likewise, in 'The Godfather,' we still get the sense that Michael is doing wrong, even as our protagonist. Coppola doesn't just show him killing people, he does it juxtaposed to the baptism of his newborn nephew. That's filmmaking. Not this junk.
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