Just got back from Gangster Squad with Don Winslow. We both wanted to see it, the trailers made it look stylish and fun and we both love that gangster era.
Hoo boy, if there hadn't been four other people there, we would have heckled it, especially the Chinatown scene that took every stereotype in the book like constant firecrackers going off to make sure we knew it was Chinatown, MSTK3 style. The dialogue is just so awful. We knew it wouldn't be Ellroy, but we wanted something fun, and we were entertained, but for all the wrong reasons. Everyone gives career worst performances, Gosling has this weird, high pitched nasal voice, Nick Nolte is hilariously bad as Chief Parker and Penn sounds (and kind of looks like!) like Pacino in Dick Tracy. It's a huge waste of an amazing cast, including up and comers like Michael Pena, who we think would be a great Adan Barerra in Power of the Dog (This movie, by the way? Steals that book's ending with Brolin and Penn having a fist-fight in a fountain). Emma Stone is sexy as hell and does okay as a gun moll, but she's also woefully mis-cast. Also funny is that it's 1949 and there's a black guy and a Mexican guy on the squad (named Navidad, or in English,"Happy.") and no one bats an eye at this.
On the bright side, many of the scenes and dialogue ("Who's the tomato?" )were hilarious, but we still came out wishing we were watching The Untouchables, which played with history too, but knowingly and entertainingly so. Will Beall, I know you can write, I've read L.A. Rex!
They took a very interesting time and story and made a badly made cartoon. Hell, a biopic of Mickey Cohen would be great. He converted to Christianity in prison and spent the last several years of his life as an evangelist. Made us appreciate Boardwalk Empire and other well-made gangster stories so much more, think I'm gonna pop in Miller's Crossing tonight to cleanse my brain and give it a treat for enduring that.
