{"id":2336,"date":"2013-01-18T14:48:46","date_gmt":"2013-01-18T13:48:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=2336"},"modified":"2016-01-24T18:44:52","modified_gmt":"2016-01-24T17:44:52","slug":"gangster-squad-dir-ruben-fleischer-4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=2336","title":{"rendered":"Gangster Squad<\/em> (2013), dir. Ruben Fleischer"},"content":{"rendered":"

Gangster Squad<\/em> passes quite easily what we must now call the Cameron Test;\u00a0 it does what it says on the tin.\u00a0 Sgt John O\u2019Mara, played solidly and stolidly by Josh Brolin, the \u2018only\u2019 sea-green incorruptible of the current LAPD is tasked by Nick Nolte\u2019s Police Commissioner to bring down Sean Penn\u2019s, Mickey Cohen, the local crime boss.\u00a0 It is 1949, and O\u2019Mara, a veteran of the second world war sees life in suitably rough and ready terms.\u00a0 He recruits four other incorruptibles with the help of his wife, Connie, who can see that he doesn\u2019t need angels, but people with skills and a gritty integrity that mirrors her husband\u2019s.\u00a0 Connie is played by Mireille Enos; best known here, I\u2019d suggest, for her leading role in the American remake of The Killing<\/em>. And she is terrific as the pregnant wife who is the balance to O\u2019Mara\u2019s slightly predictable obsession with Cohen.<\/p>\n

So far so predictable,\u00a0 and that is both the strength and weakness of this film.\u00a0 It\u2019s very much along the stock noir B-Movie lines.\u00a0 The gang are operating outside the law for much of the time and they have a range of successes and then catastrophic failures as they discovered, but, as Hollywood demands, they \u2018win\u2019 in the end.\u00a0 But the film rises above it\u2019s B-Movie rank out of the sheer stylishness of the delivery.\u00a0 All the performances are good, including Ryan Gosling as Brolin\u2019s assistant who falls for and captures the heart of Cohen\u2019s \u2018moll\u2019, played equally strongly by Emma Stone.<\/p>\n

The design of 40\u2032s Los Angeles is unlikely to go wrong, and the film is beautifully shot.\u00a0 The atmosphere, the clothes, the wise-cracking script and the music all make for a very entertaining two hours of fairly undemanding cinema.\u00a0 Gangster Squad<\/em> is certainly not the turkey that some have deemed it;\u00a0 but it has to be said that Sean Penn\u2019s, Mickey Cohen, is vastly over played, and the prosthetics do suggest an ex-boxer, which he is, but with disastrous lack of subtlety.
\n 
\nIan Pople<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Ian Pople<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":[]},"categories":[14,283],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\nGangster Squad (2013), dir. Ruben Fleischer - The Manchester Review<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=2336\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Gangster Squad (2013), dir. 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