I loved this movie. Apparently no one else did, but this is nothing new. I am all the time liking movies the critics hate and hating the movies everyone else loves. Pretty much I operate on the notion that if Ebert likes it, I won’t. He wins, of course. He gets paid to write reviews. I get popcorn.
Any movie about Los Angeles is going to interest me. I grew up in L.A. county, went to Dodger games, shopped the garment district, ate at the Original Pantry downtown, home of obscenely huge omelets and lines out the door and around the block.
Further back in our family history, though, there are dark rumors of the fearsome Goldberger brothers, fierce and possibly-criminal Jews who left Hungary in the very-late nineteenth century, settled down in Chicago, and then got tossed out of town for shenanigans, the details of which haven’t been disclosed to me. They settled in Los Angeles, and here I am.
Here they are:
The one called “unknown” in this picture is Arthur. They do look a bit gangstery, all of them, don’t they, especially Hugo in his pin-stripes. (I met Hugo at my grandfather’s funeral in 1982. He was decided non-gangstery in his yarmulke, at least to this untrained Protestant eye.) The one with the bizarrely-orange face is my grandpa. You don’t get a complexion like that without something fishy going on, so maybe there’s a little gangsta history in this birthday girl’s blood (did I mention today is my birthday?), who’s to say?
Back to the movie: it’s 1949 in Los Angeles, home of the Brown Derby restaurant, perfect weather, and young girls getting off buses at Union Station day and night, coming in search of an audition, certain they are the next Greta Garbo.
They aren’t. They’re the next victim of post-WWII, mid-century sex traffickers who run girls out of downtown hotels in between picking up heroin shipments. The leader of the crime scene—and wannabe mob boss—is Mickey Cohen (Sean Penn), a Jew who’s been tossed out of Chicago for shenanigans, the details of which aren’t disclosed. Word is, Cohen’s taking over Los Angeles—it’s his destiny, he says—the cops are in his pocket, and frankly, sugar, it’s a done deal. Keep your head down and your nose clean. This here’s Mickey’s town.
More frankly, if someone’s going to tie one end of me to one car and the other end of me to another car and then command the two cars to pull hard and far in opposite directions, I’m basically going to do whatever he says, and down with my ethics class and everything I’ve ever learned about good decision-making, and Mickey can have the town, Garbo and all.
Enter the “Gangster Squad,” a group of off-the-record LAPD officers who are charged by Chief Parker (Nick Nolte) with busting up Mickey’s nascent syndicate. Led by Sergeant O’Mara (Josh Brolin), the picked group of not-Boy-Scout cops, rushes into Mickey’s establishments guns blazing. Lots of people die.
The script is smart, the characterizations savvy. I’m more than a little irritated by the negative reception I see that this film is getting. “Too much violence,” the “Top Critics” at Rotten Tomatoes say, these the people who gave Django a 95% fresh rating. Comparing the violence in Gangster Squad to the violence in Django is like comparing the fat content of bacon to the fat content of celery.
Speaking of Django, it took me a while to assimilate Django into my life—to understand that when there has been unthinkable injustice and horror, there is probably no level of violence that is too great that may be used to exact vengeance for that injustice. Not only is Gangster Squad not nearly as violent as Django, the violence that we see in Gangster Squad is undertaken by the Law. Django is pure vigilantism, while GS is a task-force operating under the auspices of the LAPD to put down a budding mob presence in Los Angeles. With this perspective, there is no way the violence is out of line.
Think about it: Los Angeles is the second largest city in the United States. When I was growing up, I remember learning it was the third largest, after NYC and Chicago. Both those other larger cities were and maybe still are dens of corruption and mob activity. To keep such activity out of the next largest city in the country, how much violence is okay? Some might say, “just enough to keep it out,” but who’s to say how much that is? Maybe better if you shut it down definitively instead of being picky. How ‘bout instead of squishing ants one at a time, you put a blow-torch to the ant hill? Just sayin’.
Sean Penn is awesome. He’s been taking flack since Ridgemont High, but I think we need to put that behind us. Like Leonardo, who still suffers from post-Titanic jeers, Penn has been the object of pot shots for decades. However, I’m a great fan of his art. The last film I saw him (and loved him) in was Fair Game, a remarkable movie about courage and forthrightness under great pressure. Penn is a great artist, but the fact is, some people don’t like him, so they go, “Ewww, violence, bad movie!” Down with them.
The uber-cute Ryan Gosling is also in this movie, as is the ubiquitous Emma Stone. They both continue to be cute. Josh Brolin is perfect as the buttoned-down WWII vet who can’t wait to blast away at Cohen (“You go, Greatest Generation, you!”), but who is also under the command and thumb of his sweet and brilliant wife. I can’t help thinking of Brolin as Young Agent K in MIB3, but he kept it together and I never wondered if this movie was going to veer off into absurdity. It doesn’t. and it ends perfectly.
Speaking of the end, stay for the credits. The postcard images of Los Angeles are lovely.
A note on Palladio Theaters in Folsom in case the young man behind the concessions counter really does read this: We drive a long way to get there. It would be easier and closer to go to the theaters on Iron Point. But at Palladio, they don’t burst in at the end of the movie and start loudly cleaning up. They wait for the last patron (usually me; I always stay through all the credits) to leave before they start their chores, and they always say, “Thanks for coming. Have a nice day.” I go once or twice a week.
One time (Harry Potter 7b, midnight showing), I settled three kids in the theater, then came back out to the concessions to buy two large popcorns and two large sodas, what the heck was I thinking? A young man behind the counter asked if he could help me carry it all. Maybe he was dreading working that increasingly long line, but still. That’s service.