2013 IN REVIEW
Gangster Squad
Some say it was a good action/crime with some solid support from Sean Penn! Some have said it is garbage and the scriptwriter was connected to the rumored garbage Justice League script! So from a comic nerd perspective, how does it hold up??
This movie is essentially the ultimate shitty crime drama. The story couldn't be any more generic:
Mobster runs town.
Mobster can't get arrested because he pays everyone off.
Tough guy no-nonsense cops go off the books to take him down.
Now in every movie where the guy is a mobster the cops can't just arrest him, but they always find some other way to get him or nail him with evidence. In this movie the police chief just straight up says "just go kill him". [frick]ing stupid.
Josh Brolin plays Mickey Rourke 2.0. Sean Penn has these stupid face prostetics that make him look like the mobster 'Lips' from Dick Tracy (why couldn't you just get an Irish actor??? I hate subtle racism like this). Ryan Gosling plays Brad Pitt 2.0. Emma Stone plays a slut that falls in love with Gosling because he lit her cigarette like a pro. Absolute garbage. They even got my boy Giovanni Ribisi to play the nice guy that I knew in his intro scene that he was going to die, which is ok, but I also knew exactly when and how and why he was going to die. Every detail was so predictable in this entire movie, and the backstories for all the characters are so generic and done-before you won't even want to listen to them.
And if you are anything like me, you will assume this entire movie was paid for by Big Tobacco and the NRA. If they aren't smoking they are shooting. The only real positives in this movie are that they took the old 80s crime drama formula and updated it in high-def and tossed a couple of big budget slo-mo moments in the movie. Otherwise everything about it was garbage, I think the movie company even know they were just updated an old formula in HD.
This is one that I wanted to watch because while the reviews are mixed, some of them were positive, so I was curious. I'd also like to make an effort to tackle 2013 and report about it right here at comicbookmovie.com.
Anyways, if you are wondering whether you should check this one out, I would say NO, avoid it.
3.5/10
-Nibs