Gangster Squad: Turning the Untouchables into a Saturday Morning Cartoon

"Watch out for that new Power Ranger franchise: Power Rangers - Untouchable Gangster Squad!!"

Twenty years ago, Gangster Squad would have changed my life. I would have been a fresh teen, sneaking into a cool R-rated actioner filled with quick-witted aces, duplicitous dames, and brutal bad guys that looked and sounded just like most of the heavies from the first season of Batman the Animated Series.

Of course, that would have only happened if I never saw the Untouchables, Devil in a Blue Dress, or LA Confidential. But, at ripening old age, I have seen all of these movies, as well as countless other flicks, shows, and video games, some successful (Boardwalk Empire) and some less so (The Black Dhalia and Rockstar's L.A. Noire), which have covered this ground with greater craft and concern for verisimilitude, character, and narrative than Ruben Fleischer's Gangster Squad.

Mind you, I enjoy Fleischer's work. Zombieland was pretty solid for its relatively modest ambitions, and 30 Seconds or Less is a decent, if slight, diversion. However, Fleischer is purely a populist filmmaker who likely has his sights set on becoming the next Zack Snyder or Michael Bay, and he will probably be sliding into a cushy position as a middle-of-the-road journeyman whose works will inevitably display more bombast than vision. Granted, that's a bold prediction, but I offer Gangster Squad as proof. At its best, Gangster Squad is a rip-roaring good time in the vein of old school gangster B-movies, like Angels with Dirty Faces, where morality is black and white and characters are flat as paper but bullets fly as fast as the quips. At its worse, the flick is a living cartoon with simplistically insulting morality, almost zero cleverness or narrative depth (despite rich source material), and a cast of characters that seems handpicked by the Saturday Morning Cartoon Commission on Diversity.

I want to start with the characters in Gangster Squad because as a viewer with a personal awareness that a multicultural vigilante unit in 1940's LA is a deceptively pleasant fiction, that element sticks out like the sorest thumb imaginable. Despite Fleischer and crew's best efforts at reaching a broad audience and respecting global cultural diversity, there is literally no way an African-American or a Hispanic-American would have occupied a place on an elite vigilante unit in pre-Civil rights era Los Angeles, no matter how progressive California was and continues to be. As a Black man, I admit it's cool to see Anthony Mackie playing knife-slinging, smart ass cowboy/ninja/cop Coleman Harris, but I know it's BS, the special brand designed to entice the 18-35 black male demo to come out and see a movie they would have seen with or without an African-American character. Even worse, Fleischer makes only a cursory acknowledgement of the fact that Harris' presence on the squad is inherently odd. To further diminish suspension of disbelief, he adds a Mexican-American character, the colorfully named Navidad Ramirez (Michael Pena, woefully underused), who is essentially a "My Man Friday" to Robert Patrick's rootin-tootin' Yosemite Sam, Max Kennard. That said, the white boys don't fare much better, as Josh Brolin is saddled with every Irish cop stereotype in the book with the exception of red hair, as hard-fightin' and hard-drinkin' John  O'Meara. Only Giovanni Ribisi, as surveillance geek with a conscience, and Ryan Gosling narrowly escape such egregious one-dimensionality, most likely because the romantic lead has to have some semblance of depth, even if that depth only reaches into the reservoirs of Gosling's previous turns as a tiny-voiced charmer. 

Aside from its Rainbow Heroes Collective, Gangster Squad boasts a narrative with little to say and even less on its mind. Not every piece of work that graces the silver screen has to be art; we all know that, but even the pure popcorn entertainment should endeavor to be mildly clever in its progression and respectably honest  about its setting. The vigilantes and villains at the center of Gangster Squad are easily the dullest knives in the drawer, bar none. O'Meara and his squad plan to go to war with East Coast mobster Mickey Cohen, but they have only the barest of bare bones plans: take'em down head on. How about planning an attack? How about wearing masks (which only happens once and never again, leading to friends and families being put in avoidable danger)? How about killing your enemies before they kill your families? How about scouting your enemy then planning an attack where you wear masks and kill those who might kill your family? None of these options are viable; instead, the squad opts to bug Mickey Cohen's home and proceed to bulldoze through a gang war like stickup kids.Cohen, for his part, isn't much smarter, spending more time cackling and grimacing like he was auditioning for a role as one of Gotham's lesser known Batman punching bags than devising fool-proof plans to build a low-key criminal empire--his big plan is to force all West Coast gambling through a central location, because that would never catch the authorities attention. Though Penn probably enjoyed gnashing on scenery in a manner that could only rival the chomping DeNiro displayed in DePalma's The Untouchables (yes, those guys, again). 

To make matters worse, countless works of fiction and non-fiction have gone to great lengths to reveal early 20th century Los Angeles as a complex beast, one that was as affected by racial strife, drugs, crime, and police corruption as it was by the ever growing movie industry. Very little of that complexity, much less the adherent gray morality associated with such a murky period, is acknowledged on camera. If Gangster Squad was the first of its kind, it's black-white morality, in which good cops are unflinching paragons of virtue and gangsters and corrupt cops are the slime that oozes between the sidewalks, might be refreshing, even optimistic, but it exists in the shadow of more than a dozen, or more films that have dealt with the period and its complexities with greater depth, honesty, and entertainment value. Heck, one only needs to look at LA Confidential or the classic Chinatown as evidence.

So, how does Fleischer and his crew counter this lunk-headed approach to narrative and theme? With guns-a-blazing, slow-mo, nacho cheesy dialogue, and a saturated palette that makes the setting as much a cartoon as its characters. For all its faults, Gangster Squad is pretty consistent with the shoot-outs and the stabbings and the beatings. There is such quick movement from set piece to set piece, often with only the barest of rationalization, that one could ignore the lesser elements and just have a whizz-bang good time watching O'Meara and co. gun down the bad guys like the video game characters they are. For most audiences, that will be enough. For anyone with cable or over the age of 13, the proceedings of Gangster Squad will seem flashy but highly derivative. To wit, those multiple set pieces lack any sense of tension beyond the moments that encourage the audience to take bets on which character will die the tragic death that will spur our heroes to cross the line in their pursuit of the pugnacious Cohen. 

Ultimately, Gangster Squad is just the type of throwback action flick that belongs in the January doldrums, that rarefied space where we get a ton of action movies that would have easily been banished to Netflix if not for the generally empty slate studios offer in the early months of the year. Of course, it was originally scheduled for release in November, as some whispered about potential Oscar nods that would never surface, but was pushed back for reshoots after the Dark Knight Tragedy in Aurora, CO last July. As bad as it may have seemed at the time, that move was probably a blessing in disguise because now Gangster Squad seems like it might have a shot at dominating the box office without the threat of real competition,  aside from Marlon Wayans' A Haunted House--which will surely sneak up on the Squad and probably crush them. Instead of being demolished, Gangster Squad will have a clear lane to taking its place as a decidedly guilty pleasure for teenagers who have never been allowed to see a gangster flick of worth, so good job Gangster Squad cast and crew, you only had to leave your original release behind and your brains at the door to take your place in the hearts and minds of the unenlightened youth. Congrats.

Review - Drive

Grade: A-

Good: Refn’s striking visual style highlights an ultraviolent tale that blends the audio and visual into a killer cinematic experience. Gosling leads a cast of top-notch actors with reliable performers like Mulligan and Cranston deftly balancing the exaggerated and the restrained; unflinchingly, brutally violent.

Bad: A bit glacial in the early acts; romance subplot is a rehash of overused “monster becomes human through love plot; unflinchingly, brutally violent.

Ugly: The results of a shotgun blast to the face.

Anybody who drives stick knows that shifting is all about tension. Feeling the car strain under stress tells a good driver it’s time to shift gears and make a move. Ryan Gosling’s character, Driver—the second lead character, in a year’s time, named Driver since Dwayne Johnson’s turn in the thematically similar Faster—in Nicholas Winding Refn’s Drive is essentially shifting personified. Idling with unnerving calm, but displaying magnificent aggression when in motion.

Gosling shows a ridiculous amount of control as the possibly unhinged Driver, a preternaturally icy and fearless stuntman by day and a brutally efficient wheelman by night. Driver’s partner/mentor, Shannon (Bryan Cranston, again over his head in criminal activity), has dreams of making Driver a professional, ostensibly on the NASCAR circuit. Shannon’s dreams come, as they always do, with a heavy cost, which puts Shannon in debt with local producer turned heavy Bernie Rose (Albert Brooks, in a welcome diversion from his trademark L.A. neurotic) and his unstable partner, ironically Jewish Guido, Nino (Ron Perlman, extending his streak of playing unrepentant badasses). Meanwhile, Driver, who, for undisclosed reasons has found a way to live in relative isolation in the City of Angels, strikes up a friendship with single mother, Irene (an equally, amazingly restrained Carey Mulligan) who lives down the hall with her son Benicio—seriously, is Benicio Del Toro that popular that someone’s naming kids after him (which probably isn’t the case, but the name does stand out)? When Irene’s husband (Oscar Isaac) is released from prison and promptly forced to commit a stickup with the aid of the supple Blanche (Christina Hendricks), Driver is thrust into a tense web of ultraviolence and betrayal that may shift him completely out of gear (oh, the marketing folks should pay up for that one right now).

One thing Drive has that most mainstream films today lack, but indy and foreign films have in spades, is a wonderfully distinct visual style. Refn does an amazing job creating a palpable visual signature marked by a high contrast palette that gives L.A. a unsettling twilight glow after dark while days in the city are drenched with blinding white sunlight. Against this backdrop, Refn stagesa few—not enough for my tastes, especially in a movie about a wheelman—some simple, tense car chases and shockingly violent confrontations that occur with the sudden viciousness of a car accident. He combines these arresting visuals with a sublime aural experience, due mostly to a striking, if idiosyncratic score by Cliff Martinez that channels bubbly 80’s European electropop in a fascinating juxtaposition with savagery and vehicular aggression.

As overwhelming as Refn’s masterful marriage of sound and image is, Drive is blessed with a collection of top-notch talent delivering solid performances all around. Gosling’s performance as Driver is an intriguing experiment in restraint, as his nearly emotionless character rarely exhibits emotions beyond unsettling serenity and detached rage. Gosling’s, who is having such an amazing year that iTunes is hyping a collection of his most notable works, quality is well-known, and with Drive he only solidifies the validity of the acclaim despite being saddled with what is clearly a spin on the Dexter archetype (though Drive narrowly predates Dexter by about a year). Mulligan more than matches internalized intensity with her quietly suffering single mother. She gives Irene a shell-shocked quality that seems to mimic Driver’s detachment, but she grounds it with flashes of emotion, particularly when interacting with Driver or her son, that show she is not as lost as Driver. While reliable heavyweights like Cranston and Brooks perform with expected excellence, Perlman and Isaac sneak in to steal a few scenes as men at the end of their rope who are forced, like Driver, to make uncertain moves. Both make their character’s frustration and fear, respectively, so tangible in different ways—Perlman going more over the top and Isaac showing more reserve—that it's hard not to applaud their efforts. Hendricks role is, unfortunately, quite minor and never gives her a chance to show the charm that makes her such a draw on Mad Men.

Despite visuals, music and performance that are firing on all cylinders (I promise that will be the last car reference), Drive is weakened by glacial pacing in the first two acts and anchored by a clichéd human-love-heals-the-monster storyline that make it slightly less unique. The European influence is thick in Drive and some of the early acts are bound to lose viewers with weak attention spans, or at least those who are slavish to the rapid-fire movement of most modern mainstream cinema. The heavy focus on visuals, silence and atmosphere are candy for those who love the artistry of film, but those who are more riveted by a forceful story may feel a bit cold. Also, while Drive is an adaptation of James Sallis’ 2005 novel of the same name—which dug much deeper into Driver’s motivations—Refn’s choice to emphasize the dangerous-loner-falls-in-love-and-may-change-for-the-better angle is not particularly inspired. Anyone who has even seen at least one movie or show with that storyline as a central thread knows where Drive is headed. On a somewhat related note, Drive is brutal. The violence in this is shocking, sudden, and gory. To the faint of heart, you’ve been warned. To those who aren't, you've been prepped.

As a special treat, Refn’s was on hand after the credits rolled to hold a Q&A session, where he discussed the development process for Drive, the perils of the studio system and how he wooed Ryan Gosling while he was high on flu medicine. Refn offered some telling insights into his method and thematic focus for the film and the three—though I only counted two—car chases that served as Drive’s major set pieces. The session was valuable not only for the behind the scenes information, but for Refn’s insight on what he was trying to say with this intriguing piece of cinema. Suffice to say, without Refn’s comments, I would not have aligned my interpretation of the work with his. Take that as you will.

Overall, Drive is remarkable for being a fairly unique, yet undeniably effective cinematic experience, all without the aid of a third dimension and jacked ticket prices. It is indicative of a welcome trend where action movies are becoming more low-tech and simplistic in an era where such films can no longer compete with tentpoles that rest on CGI and built-in audiences. For those with the patience, appreciation for the visual artistry of cinema, and the stomach for brutality, Drive is definitely worth a ride (sorry, that's absolutely the last driving reference).