Don’t let the trailer fool you, ‘Gangster Squad’ is a must-see

Set in post-WWII era Los Ange­les, “Gang­ster Squad” is the story of a town that suc­cumbs to the crim­i­nal monar­chy of a ris­ing mob­ster, Mickey Cohen (Sean Penn). Cohen is vig­i­lant in his mes­sage when he says, “Los Ange­les is MY town!” as he stretches a rival gang­ster from another horde between two cars. He wants the world to know that noth­ing hap­pens in L.A. with­out his say so. The police force stands idly by as he ter­ror­izes the city and spreads his drugs through­out the town, since the police are also on his pay­roll. It seems like there is a dis­mal future for L.A.

One man, still loyal to his oath as a police offi­cer, just returned to his town after the war and sees that there is no jus­tice left in the place he chose to raise a fam­ily. Sgt. John O’Mara decides to ruf­fle some feath­ers as he sends Mickey a mes­sage of his own by infil­trat­ing his ram­part and exact­ing jus­tice on his hench­men to res­cue a kid­napped girl. An hon­est police chief finds out about this act of valor and asks O’mara if he would like to go off the grid and assem­ble a gang of his own and try to steal the spot­light away from Mickey. O’mara agrees and puts together his own squad that con­sists of men with indi­vid­u­ally unique tal­ents. When they put their skills to the test, they become an unstop­pable force that oper­ates out­side the law.

Go see this movie. “Gang­ster Squad” sur­prised me at every turn. Every ele­ment of this movie was per­fectly exe­cuted. For starters, the cin­e­matog­ra­phy was so fresh and thought out that it was like watch­ing a piece of art. There were slow-motion side-scrolling steady shots that actu­ally told an entire story as the cam­era panned from one spot to another. There is a scene involv­ing a dark room, a lot of fight­ing and some gun­play that uses the actual muz­zle blast to paint a pic­ture on the screen, giv­ing you a glimpse at what is hap­pen­ing. You will find your­self lean­ing in your seat to try chang­ing your van­tage point because you feel like you are in the scene.

For some unbe­knownst rea­son, I hate Sean Penn. I am not cer­tain why — after all he was, Spi­coli, right?. Per­haps it’s a deep-rooted jeal­ousy that I used to har­bor because he was dat­ing Madonna when I had a crush on her dur­ing her “Who’s That Girl” phase. Mov­ing on.

As I men­tioned, the main antag­o­nist in this movie is played by Penn. He comes off as being a ruth­less, mer­ci­less sav­age with a rich his­tory in fight­ing his way to the top with his fists, guns and all-around intim­i­dat­ing per­sona. “Gang­ster Squad” will for­ever be remem­bered as the movie that made me like and respect Penn as an actor. Every time he was on cam­era I was won­der­ing what he was going to do next and actu­ally felt pity for many of his vic­tims. It has been years since there was a vil­lain so loath­some that I couldn’t wait to see him get what was com­ing to him. Every time a char­ac­ter took a swing at him, I swung too. When, O’Mara’s fist con­nected with his bleed­ing jaw, I smiled. Penn played the bad guy role so well that I hon­estly wanted to see him brought to jus­tice in the movie.

There is a car chase scene that tran­spires dur­ing a drug run. I have not seen a car scene that can even come close to the free­way scene from “The Matrix: Reloaded.” Every­thing since then has been sort of “seen it” for me. I am always won­der­ing if there will be a movie that can have a car scene that was as fun and orig­i­nal as that one. “Gang­ster Squad” deliv­ers again! It is very cool to see the old late 40s-model Packards, Cadil­lacs and Oldsmo­biles in this movie — you know, the iconic “gang­ster” cars of yes­ter­year. But how could they make a cool chase scene with those bulky vehi­cles and their lim­ited abil­i­ties? It is with a lot of raw, clever chore­og­ra­phy and a great cast. This scene rede­fined what a car chase scene can be. These cars are not stream­lined or very fast, so there is a lot of bump­ing and fly­ing bul­lets as the good guys chase down an envoy of gang­sters. They have to be resource­ful as they nar­rowly miss being blown up by dyna­mite that is being tossed from a car in front of them. O’Mara climbs out of the back­seat and into the dri­ver seat as he takes the wheel to swerve all over the road. This stirs up a lot of dust and impairs the remain­ing vehi­cles behind them. Then they play a game of chicken while under the con­ceal­ment of the dust cloud. It was so fun to watch this whole scene unfold. From the open­ing credit sequence to the rolling cred­its, “Gang­ster Squad” is full of thrills and fast-paced action.

The only neg­a­tive com­ment that I have about this movie is the trail­ers did not make it look like a movie that I felt the need to see in the­aters. It did not make the movie look bad in any way, but there are a lot of things I think they could have put in the trailer that would have given a bet­ter insight to the movie. There was no moment that I said to myself, “I bet­ter pre-order my tick­ets today!” 

Show­times at Rave Motion Pic­tures Polaris 18, 1071 Gem­ini Place for Fri­day: 11:15 a.m., 2:15 p.m., 5:15 p.m., 8:15 p.m., 9:45 p.m. and 11 p.m.

Posted by Scott Hall on Jan 10 2013. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.