Gangster Squad (Blu-ray)

Sean Penn's performance recalls his god awful 1930s/40s "style" from the execrable We're No Angels. A whole lot of mugging - more Bowery Boys than bloodthirsty gangster. Awful. Hambone acting and dialogue. I suppose the sheer stupidity of this project dawned on the otherwise talented cast; the performances border on a parody of a period piece. What can actor do with lines such as: "Say, what's the big idea, Buster?"The "facts" run counter to what I've read and seen (not that I'm any expert) about the L.A. underworld.However, the filmmakers, obviously going for a L.A. Confidential rip-off, can be taken to task for historical inaccuracies.This even fails as shoot em up entertainment. Dumb and nihilistic, this film hasn't "earned" the right to portray such viscous - and wildly misogynistic - brutality. (Like L.A. Confidential or a Scorsese movie. Or even a horror romp.) And unlike a "B" movie/ exploitation flick - where explicit violence has a certain charm, this is just a dreary piece of hackwork; ugly and cruel.This even features a young "Daryl Gates" - later of 80s/Rodney King excesses and infamy. Which must be the most misguided -one might say stupid - idea in the history of filmdom. (Though it does provide - albeit unintentional - much needed levity to this pile of celluloid sewage.)

Gangster Squad is a neo-Noir featuring Sean Penn as real life Los Angeles mafioso Mickey Cohen and Josh Brolin the cop trying to bring him down. Emma Stone as the woman in between them. Brolin creates an anti-mob squad made up of Ryan Gosling, Anthony Mackie, Robert Patrick, Michael Pena and Giovanni Ribisi. Things start with a voice over by Brolin about the hard times of the city. He also plays the hardnosed detective fighting against the odds. Both are Noir tropes.I wasn’t so sure about Penn as the gangster boss but then he gives a speech about Manifest Destiny and Los Angeles being his destiny and I was sold. Some things get oversold however like when Gosling gets angry at Penn. The music rises to a crescendo like it’s going to be a massive scene when it’s not. They do that some other times as well. It’s also interesting that nothing Brolin does is legal with the argument that you need fire to beat fire.Overall Gangster Squad is a good crime thriller. There’s plenty of action although it has some flaws.

If you transformed the western movie The Magnificent Seven into a crimefighting movie and brought it down to a comic book level, you'd get Gangster Squad.This movie is easy to follow and the violence is over the top. While the movie is set in late 1940s Los Angeles, this is definitely not a LA Noire film. Watching Gangster Squad is like reading a comic book off your TV screen.I gave it three stars because the characters were so stereotyped (the cowboy! the black guy! the Hispanic guy! the Handsome guy! the gun moll with a heart of gold! the nerd guy! the well-dressed gangster with a tommy gun!) and one-dimensional, because Sean Penn's face-changing prosthetic pieces made him look like a Dick Tracy bad guy, and because the shootouts in public were so prolonged and vicious they were implausible (oh, and that many dead bystanders too? To include women and children? And the State or Federal Government isn't getting involved? Bull!).Gangster Squad is a satisfactory movie but best watched if you're bored or if you can't sleep. It's colorful and requires no thinking and the bad guys get what's coming to them, but that's about it.

Look, it's a fun story overall, but I think the exploits of the actual Gangster Squad - as well as the actual gangsters and the LAPD at-large, were certainly overlooked.The story takes place in post-war Los Angeles, 1949. The actual Gangster Squad was assembled long before under Chief C.B. Horrall, and yes, Sgt. Jack O'Mara, Sgt. Jerry Wooters, and Officer Conwell Keeler were actual members. Mickey Cohen was eventually a target, but only after Benjamin Siegel (SPOILER ALERT - he was not mentioned in this movie AT ALL) was killed in 1947. The movie credits the Gangster Squad for the apprehension of Cohen, but in real life (and mentioned in other films, publications, and the like), Cohen went to jail in 1951 for tax evasion after being investigated by the Kefauver Commission. Officer Conwell Keeler, who was killed in the line of duty in the film, did not die until 2012. Chief Parker (played by Nick Nolte) was rather young and was barely a Deputy Chief when the film took place. The characters of Coleman Harris and Navidad Ramirez were not actual members of the squad nor did they exist. Outside of the Academy, the Operations Bureau of the LAPD in 1949 - which included all of the geographic divisions and investigative units - was segregated and remained so until 1961 under Chief Parker. Jack Whalen died in 1959 while at dinner with Cohen and not by Cohen himself. I can go on, but these are some of the small details that annoyed me, which if left in, could have made for a more interesting film.Despite its shortcomings, I bought the movie anyway. It's still a pretty interesting story and provided a little insight into postwar LA and it's major players outside of the film industry.

I love this movie for everything it's supposed to be, which is a retro-noir shoot 'em up flick. It's not supposed to be thought inducing or provocative, but instead a film you can sit back and enjoy. It's a shame that we live in a world that forced the ending of this movie to be re-written. I read the original script online, and I feel that it would've been a much more widely loved film had the original version been released.All that being said, I deducted one star for the shoddy streaming playback. My connection is more than adequate to facilitate a streaming movie free of interruptions.

me and my wife totally love this movie, as it was based on true events

Good movie - not the best about the police force in LA. LA Confidential and the Black Dahlia are better in my opinion.

good price

all ok

Good item, fast delivery