by
Julien Faddoul
0 stars
d – Ruben Fleischer
d – Ruben Fleischer
w – Will Beall (Based on the Book by Paul Lieberman)
ph – Dion Bebee
pd – Maher Ahmed
m – Steve Jablonsky
ed – Alan Baumgarten, James Herbert
cos – Mary Zophres
p – Dan Lin, Kevin McCormick, Michael Tadross
Cast: Josh Brolin, Ryan Gosling, Sean Penn, Nick Nolte, Emma Stone, Anthony Mackie, Giovanni Ribisi, Michael Peña, Robert Patrick
Any
strict auteurist will tell you that there is a reason why the script is the
only part of a movie that can be thrown into a trash bin. One of the pre-suppositions
of the auteur theory is that a bad screenplay can be made into a cinematic
triumph with a great director. It’s hard to tell what Ruben Fleischer thought
he could accomplish when he was given the script of Gangster Squad, let alone
what he thought it was about. I think it’s best not to think about it too much,
for Will Beall, the screenwriter, and Mr Fleischer are making two different
movies.
Mr
Fleischer began his directing career in music videos and television commercials
until 2009 with his unexpected hit Zombieland. Gangster Squad is his third
picture (after the very modest 30 Minutes or Less) and it’s still very difficult
to see what the big deal is. Both of his previous films are nothing but embezzled
sequences from other films, yet hardly anyone seemed to notice. I think this
will be impossible this time-round because Gangster Squad is such a hackneyed
piece of thievery that if one erased the director’s name and replaced with
Jean-Luc Godard, it would be hailed as a masterpiece.
The
films that Gangster Squad pinches from include: The Public Enemy, Dick Tracy, L.A.
Confidential, Little Caesar, The Untouchables, Bugsy, Miller’s Crossing, Chinatown,
Scarface, Mulholland Falls, Bloodhounds of Broadway (that’s right, even bad
movies), The Killing, Pulp Fiction and Bonnie & Clyde, just to name a few. Now,
one of two things could have happened: either Mr Fleischer has never seen even
a frame of any of these movies, or he read this script, smelled its stale putrescence
and decided to use an abundance of style and aesthetic to turn water into wine.
I’m inclined to go with the latter.
The
style is opulent – the film begins with the Warner Bros logo with the colour de-saturated
(another clue that Mr Fleischer was inspired by The Public Enemy and other great
gangster pictures of that time) and goes on to add a pleasurable onslaught of
campy relics, such as Cadillacs, Studebakers, Packards, Hudsons, cafeteria diners,
the Union Station etc. The plot itself, which is based on the non-fiction book
by Paul Lieberman, entails six LAPD cops (the squad in question) who are assigned
to hunt and take-down crime-boss Mickey Cohen (Sean Penn). Though not
everything goes according to plan, intelligences are insulted, good-guys become
bad-guys and a lot of bodies are left for dead.
These
cops are played by Josh Brolin, Ryan Gosling, Anthony Mackie, Michael Pena,
Robert Patrick and Giovanni Ribisi. The names of their characters are
unimportant. Emma Stone plays Grace, Mickey’s ingénue girlfriend with zero
interesting things to say. The ensuing story that these characters are put
through is ludicrous to say the least – and very violent, although Mr Fleischer
is not the first director to confuse style with violence.
This
is all so audaciously lurid – with Mr Gosling's high-pitched voice, Mr Penn’s high-pitched
everything, Dion Beebe’s opportunistic photography and Steve Jablonsky awkward
score – that Mr Fleischer never finds the right tone for the very aesthetic he
is applying to the actual tone of the film, but there's only so much style can
do to spiff up shrivelled substance. The only part of this cacophony who adds
any kind of purity is Nick Nolte, playing a grizzly police chief. Purity is the
road that Mr Fleischer should have taken, fixing the screenplay first and then
adding the style. It’s true that the script is the only part of a movie that
can be thrown into a trash bin. I guess there weren’t any on set.
