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Last weekend I saw Gangster Squad but I haven’t had the chance to talk about it until now. First off let me say; I liked the movie. It was funny, full of action, and just enjoyable to watch. However, when it came to character depth, let’s just say, there wasn’t any.
For those of you who don’t know what Gangster Squad is about, let me try and break it down for you. There is this one mob king named Mickey Cohen (Sean Penn) who basically just wants to own L.A. Then we have Sargent John O’Mara (Josh Brolin) who is a cop who wants to take down Mickey and essentially gets the go ahead from his boss, the Chief of Police. O’Mara puts a “squad” together with the help of his wife, and picks: Sargent Jerry Wooters (Ryan Gosling), who originally declines, Officer Conway Keeler (Giovanni Ribisi), Officer Coleman Harris (Anthony Mackie), Officer Max Kennard (Robert Patrick), and Officer Navidad Ramirez (Michael Peña).
The movie takes place post World War 2, but O’Mara is still always fighting as if he hasn’t won. He feels this way because he is losing his city to Mickey Cohen. When deciding who to have in his squad, his wife picks who she feels is smart and good that can’t be bought with money; true officers who want to protect their city. Kennard is one of the fastest shooters with the best accuracy; his whole motto is “shoot where your target will be, not where it is”. Kennard is training Ramirez to be like him, so he kind of only gets added to the squad for that reason. Keeler is one of the smartest men that was on the US Military in the war; his only issue was he didn’t understand the reason for warrants. He was the brains behind a lot of Squads operations. Wooters, or Ryan Goslings character, is just a plain lady’s man who has a little bit of a temper.
The movie is essentially Gangsters and Cops trying to beat each other at their own game; literally. The cops plant a wire in Mickey Cohens house to hear when he will be doing drug pick ups so they can ruin his plans. When Mickey learns of this, he uses it to his advantage to plan a set up to take out the cops. At the beginning of the Squads operation, they decide to try and rob one of Mickey’s casino’s, however when they get in there they realize there are cops and start to run. One of my favourite lines from that scene goes something like “this was not a good idea” as they are all running out and away from the cops.
At the end of the movie it becomes a showdown of O’Mara vs Cohen, and probably the best line of that entire scene, is Sean Penn coming out with a gun saying “Here comes Santy Claus”. What makes that scene even better, is that Sean Penn’s character is jewish.
However, in a war of Gangsters vs Cops, you’re going to have a causality somewhere a long the lines. If it wasn’t for the fact that my favourite actor in the entire movie died (Ribisi), I probably wouldn’t have cared for his death. As I said, there is no real character development throughout the entire movie. You get maybe a sentence or two on the background of these characters, but it’s not enough to have any connection to them at all.
Overall, if you want to see a movie about a war between Gangsters and Cops and are interested in seeing Emma Stone dressed like Jessica Rabbit, I would recommend seeing this movie when you get the chance. If you are interested in the character development and aren’t as interested in the action, I would advise you to not see this movie in theatres.
Thanks for reading my movie review on Gangster Squad, I hope you enjoyed it! Leave a comment on your opinion of the movie if you’ve seen it!
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