Wham Bam, No Thank You, Man: Gangster Squad Review

Gangster Squad is so bad, it's like the Expendables of respectable actors. Ryan Gosling, James Brolin, Robert Patrick and Sean Penn... welcome to the seating chart at the Golden Globes, except here they're breaking skulls instead of applauding politely. 

My friends and I left the theatre and realized we couldn't name most of the characters we had just spent 90 minutes with. Even though it felt like 180. Hours. So in the following review, I'll refer to them the best way I know how.

It's 1940s Los Angeles, and Sergeant James Brolin O'Something has returned from the war, only to realize the real battle is in his backyard. Yes, the despotic threat of Main Bad Guy Sean Penn's overacting goes unchecked. Main Bad Guy (Cohen??) runs every racket in town, and owns nearly every cop. However, he still hasn't bought Chief Nick Nolte. After James Brolin's antics busting up a prostitution ring earn him press, condemnation, and probably a visit from the ACLU, Nick Nolte asks him to put together a team of men to take I'm-Pretty-Sure-It-Was-Cohen down. There's Jerry (Ryan Gosling), Cowboy Man (Robert Patrick), Tech Weasel, Hispanic Guy and Black Guy. They're off the books. Nobody knows their name, nobody knows their badge numbers. Many, many nameless faceless thugs will know the shape of their fists though. It isn't all unchecked violence, and quickly elided awkward moral questions from Tech Weasel, however. A romance develops between Jerry and Grace (Emma Stone), complicated by the fact that she's Cohen's doll. Will they find love? Will Cohen fall? If I don't care to know the names of the characters, I don't care to tell you. It was more interesting to try and bet on which of the principals would be whacked for the greater narrative good. I had my money on Black Guy.

Gangster Squad looks good, but the script has been pumped full of lead, and the cast is seems too drunk on period costuming to care.