Gangster Squad: Critic Reviews

The movie, as criminal drama, goes nowhere.

"Gangster Squad" would have been more fun as an animated feature, with fanciful animals in the principal roles.

For all the guns and gore, it's as breezy and uncritical as a tale from the True Detective magazine that the cops can't help reading.

A bullet-riddled bloodbath with an all-star cast, Gangster Squad is a lurid and ludicrous Mob thriller that glorifies a gangland lifestyle.

Slick, sick, self-consciously stylish and defiantly shallow, Gangster Squad is one of those movies you can't talk about without invoking other (often better) movies.

It's almost terrible. It's almost entertaining. But it's missing the shameless insanity of a wonderfully bad movie, and the particular vision, point of view, and coherence of some very good ones.

A crime against cinematic sensibility.

Fleischer's noir-influenced focus on O'Mara and Cohen offers hints of interesting commentary about Hollywood's historical visions of good and evil. But it's a strong starting point that fizzles by the finale.

There's only so much style can do to spiff up shriveled substance.

What's missing from Gangster Squad is a core, a point of view, something to patch together the cheese and carnage.

It might sound like a stretch, imagining Penn playing that intense, indiosyncratic a villain. But the lauded, veteran actor pulls a left hook, then a right, and after a wild bodyshot at the tail end of the film, you see the true mania behind his eyes.

'So it's a shame that "Gangster Squad" is nothing like a good old-fashioned gangster picture. While it's a period piece that clearly relishes its evocation of neon-bright Los Angeles in 1949, it's hardly old-fashioned. And it's no good at all ...

Some of the clothes and makeup feel as glossy as paint, but, those aside, we seem to browsing through a display of secondhand goods.

By the time it fades to black, "Gangster Squad" has squandered most of its early promise.

By the time it fades to black, "Gangster Squad" has squandered most of its early promise.

A triumph of production design but a pretty dull kill-'em-up otherwise.

Apart from the gore -- and there's plenty -- this is basically L.A. Confidential without the script.

Gangster Squad's violence has a graphic, contemporary feel that's at odds with the vintage crime pics the film wants to celebrate. This isn't the heavy-handed CG-noir of Sin City, but even so, it feels fake.

Despite a cast of gifted actors, lush 1940s production design and suave costumes, it's bereft of inspiration, plowing familiar terrain past the point of tedium to impatience.

"Gangster Squad" talks tough and hits hard, but it is a victim of its own brute force.

Bits and pieces here and there entertain. But it never really comes together in a satisfying way, and given the talent involved, that adds up to a big disappointment.

Despite the flaws and the occasional corn, this is still one of the most exhilarating and entertaining action films in recent memory.

An impressively pulpy underworld-plunger that embellishes on a 1949 showdown between a dedicated team of LAPD officers and Mob-connected Mickey Cohen (Sean Penn) for control of the city.

A cartoonish 1940s shoot-'em-up that's impossible to take seriously.

The actors do their best, but they're bringing their "A" game to a decidedly "B" production, with Penn being the most enthusiastic of this game crew.