The cons as a whole simply didn't add up to the sum of their parts, though. Despite finding a lot to pick at in Gangster Squad - none of the weaknesses make it a bad movie, even when considered altogether.
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| Emma Stone played a fresh tomato to Ryan Gosling's... his... uh... moldy... cheese...? |
The Most Annoying Part of the Movie
Josh Brolin's Badge - I'll spare the specifics since it would technically constitute a spoiler. However, keep an eye on it. The movie was many names into the closing credits before I noticed I was still rolling my eyes and shaking my head like clockwork.
Honorable Mentions: Ryan Gosling's Voice, Goofy One-Liners
The Best Parts of the Movie
The Violent Action - Here's a point that I saw listed as a weakness numerous times - mainly because of the amount of it - in critical reviews of the movie. I rather liked the execution (and respected the amount) of the violent stunts in the movie, especially the car chase scene. Sure, it was a lot. And it was unapologetic. But I wasn't overwhelmed by any feeling that it was just too much. Some more thought and time could have been given to character development, at the cost of some action - like the appended Chinatown scene - with value added. Even so, taking the movie as it was, this was roughly my line of reasoning as I walked out of the theater thinking about the complaints of excessive violence:
- In case anyone missed it, this movie was called Gangster Squad, which
- suggests it somehow involves, I don't know, some sort of... "Gangster Squad", which
- suggests we'll see the story of this "Gangster Squad" from its point of view, which
- involved a violent-as-necessary approach to busting Cohen's rackets, an objective which
- would require a heavy-handed approach from a group of uninhibited unknowns, which
- was the design - cops initially unrecognized by Cohen with the freedom to use brutal force.
The Visuals - I'm a sucker for crime stories set in LA during this era. Despite its flaws, I expect mid-century Los Angeles to somehow be represented in my version of heaven, if it exists and I make the cut. Gangster Squad was full of eye candy, ever-beautifully capturing the architecture, fashion, and mood of the noir style. The femme fatale exceeds expectation, and should have had an even bigger role. Slapsy Maxie's looks cooler here than it ever really did, I'm sure. Another pretty noir-style film in recent memory - The Black Dahlia - was as awfully performed as it was gorgeous. Despite having an incredible amount of material to draw upon from my favorite author's book, the film version remains one of the only movies I've begun enthusiastically only to refuse seeing it through to the end. In Gangster Squad, you don't have a perfect film (and were you expecting perfection, really?), but you do have enough entertainment value to have not rendered its beauty a terrible waste.
Honorable Mentions: Emma Stone's Over-achievement, GS Social Media Presence
Key Points of Summary
I generally concurred with one synopsis (Peter Rainer's) in particular. The movie's self-identity seemed to be a little bit off at times. Some aspects (dialogue in particular) seem to parody the noir style, while (I think for the most part) the goal was to keep the story honestly moving forward along the admittedly narrow plot line.
I generally disagree with the practice of forcing a comparison between Gangster Squad and some of the greatest directors (like Scorcese) and movies (like LA Confidential or Chinatown) of the gangster genre in the last four decades. Maybe a comparison to The Untouchables is more fair, given the plots of the films, but Gangster Squad simply is not as bad as 2/3 of the "professional" critics seem to think. And I'm saying this from a position where I see most of their complaints. But virtually the same proportion of critics liked/disliked The Black Dahlia, with the Rotten Tomatoes consensus seeming to pity that it had to be compared with the best gangster films. But you know what? Brian DePalma - having directed Scarface and The Untouchables - at least had some practice in the genre before driving The Black Dahlia off the road and squandering Ellroy's good work. It seems more fair to hold DePalma and The Black Dahlia to such an standard than to expect so much from Ruben Fleischer and Gangster Squad. I'm not saying give it a free pass - I had plenty of gripes about Gangster Squad - but I also had no reason to believe that Fleischer was going to come from Zombieland (the best on his short list of features, but which I did like) and get Ryan Gosling (Ryan Gosling) to turn in a performance that would rival Jack Nicholson, Robert Deniro, or even Guy Pearce for that matter. Sorry if you expected that. If you haven't seen it, maybe do yourself the same favor I did and drop your expectations to a more realistic level, save a few bucks by seeing a matinee, and enjoy Gangster Squad for its strengths: beauty and entertainment.
Overall, I come back to where I started: Gangster Squad isn't a great movie because it has numerous flaws. On the other hand, I don't think I'm being overly forgiving when I reiterate that those flaws don't detract from the experience enough to actually make it a lousy, "rotten" movie. And maybe I should clarify that it's really the critics I disagree with here, since two-thirds of the viewers (as opposed to only one third of the critics on Rotten Tomatoes) could appreciate the film without over-sensitively crapping on it because of valid (but minor) peeves.
I gave the film 3.5 stars out of 5 (it averages 3.7 with the Rotten Tomatoes audience), primarily carried by the aesthetic and entertainment values. I think I'd have considered going with a solid 4 until the aforementioned Josh-Brolin's-Badge-joke-of-a-scene.
