Gangster Squad - Written Review

"I'll make him and offer he can't refuse."  "Say hello to my little friend."  These are iconic one-liners from iconic gangster movies.  Not to be confused with gangsta (which is stupid and idiotic).  The Godfather is one of the most memorable movies and considered the quintessential gangster movie.  What do you get when you have a bunch of great actors, more one-liners than an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie, about as many gun fights as a John Woo movie, and a bunch of explosions?  You get Gangster Squad.

Again, not to be confused with gangsta.  Which is stupid.

 I'll be honest: I'm not quite sure what they were going for with this movie.  It's "based" off true events.  Yes, there was an LA based mobster named Mickey Cohen.  Yes, there was a unit put together to protect LA from Cohen.  And those are the only facts the movie got straight.  But that doesn't matter.  This isn't a documentary, this is a movie.  What about the story?  Well,...it wasn't all that good.  Not to say it was horrible, it just wasn't that good.  The characters are all 1-dimensional, the story is completely predictable at every turn, there is no dramatic tension, in many cases the story felt rushed.  There were tons of times during the film where I felt they could've spent more time elaborating more or explaining more of what they were doing.  It felt very dumbed-down.

Say "what" again!  I dare you!  I double-dare you, mother-f**ker!

 The cast, while the actors and actress themselves are top-notch, aren't really that good in this movie.  They're all completely one-dimensional.  You have the 100% evil mobster, the single-minded never takes no for an answer squad leader, the face man who thinks more about the ladies than the job, the grizzled sharpshooter, the nerdy tech guy, the dame, etc.  The characters never break from their stereo-types.  There also no dramatic tension in the story.  There's never a sense that things will go wrong.  And if they do, so what.  Seriously.  Everyone has a "so what" attitude all through this movie.  Everyone is so wooden.  I blame that on the directing.  It's like the director told the actors don't show emotion through all the scenes.  Be a robot.

I can haz hug?                                            No.                

In conclusion, what was Gangster Squad?  I think it was an attempt at turning a Dirty Harry movie into a mobster movie.  Did it do it?  ...maybe...?  There was definitely a lot of shooting.  Very little of this movie even focused on the gangster in question.  The character of Mickey Cohen wasn't a character so much as he was a plot device.  There were many moments in this movie that I would've cut or rewritten because they didn't matter and had no place in the movie.  Or it wouldn't have affected the movie.  For those of you that have seen the version of the trailer where there's a scene where mobsters shoot up a movie theater?  They cut that, because of the Colorado theater shooting.  I couldn't figure out where in the whole movie it could have gone.  It was that irrelevant that it didn't matter they cut it.  That was most of the movie.  Was it a gangster movie?  Sort of?  Was it a good movie?  Not really.  Was it a good gangster movie?  No.  Was it worth my time?  Not really.

Film Crazy Adam doesn't really recommend this movie.  Not because it was a bad movie.  Because it just wasn't that good.