Gangster Squad (2013) * *

Directed by:  Ruben Fleischer

Starring:  Josh Brolin, Sean Penn, Nick Nolte, Anthony Mackie, Ryan Gosling, Emma Stone, Giovanni Ribisi, Robert Patrick, Michael Pena

Gangster Squad is practically a remake of The Untouchables.  I was even able to figure out which two squad members were going to die based on how The Untouchables unfolded.     I was correct.   The film has all of the trappings of a good noir crime drama, including a top notch cast.    What it doesn't have is much juice.    It has a curious lack of energy considering all the activity that takes place.  

Gangster Squad takes place in 1949 Los Angeles.    Chicago gangster Mickey Cohen aims to take over Los Angeles as part of his "manifest destiny".    Soon the city is gripped with terror and the mostly corrupt police stand by and do little to stop it.    Cohen wants no help from Chicago either and kills one Chicago mobster by tying him to two different cars which are then pulled in opposite directions.   Enter Sgt. John O'Mara (Brolin), a World War II veteran who, in voiceover narration, speaks about the need for good men to do something in times like these.    He singlehandedly raids a Cohen-run brothel and makes several arrests.    This gains the LAPD positive publicity and catches the eye of Chief Parker (Nolte), who has tried in vain to bring down Cohen's operation but now thinks O'Mara is the right guy to help him.    Parker asks O'Mara to put together a "gangster squad" which will operate with no official LAPD knowledge in breaking up Cohen's organization.    

In The Untouchables, Eliot Ness had a pregnant wife and in Gangster Squad, O'Mara does too.    She frets naturally that her husband may lose his life, but she also assists him in picking his squad, which includes a womanizing cop Jerry Wooters (Gosling), a veteran crack shot (Patrick), a technology geek (Ribisi), a Hispanic cop (Pena), and a black cop who patrols streets where heroin deals are rampant (Mackie).    Aside from Wooters, who is bedding Cohen's mistress Grace (Stone), none of these squad members are developed into much as characters.     O'Mara is a stern, humorless leader who confesses to a colleague that without fighting, he doesn't know what to do with himself.

Sean Penn has the look of someone who has been through some wars (Cohen was a former boxer).   He barks orders and acts mercilessly towards anybody who screws up.    Why anyone would want to work for Cohen is a mystery, since he lacks any sort of charm and kills anyone who looks at him crooked.    Is the money really worth dealing with a guy like Cohen?    Since Cohen's boxing past is referred to frequently, it comes as no shock that his final showdown vs. O'Mara is a fistfight.    It's another of those instances in which a character has another at gunpoint and decides to throw the gun away and fight mano y mano.    This has become a tired cliche. 

I don't know if the similarity to The Untouchables was intentional, but I felt I was watching a lesser version of the 1987 film.     The difference is Cohen is arrested for murder here and the ending narration by Brolin hints that Cohen met his end in Alcatraz.    In reality, Cohen was convicted of tax evasion and died of cancer in 1976 shortly after being released from prison.     Maybe Cohen's fate was changed so Gangster Squad didn't seem like a remake.    Regardless, Gangster Squad has a strong cast and so-so material you've seen before and better.