TAKING THE MICKEY (GANGSTER SQUAD)
The popularity of Westerns, war movies and swords and sandals epics may have waxed and waned over the years but the gangster genre has remained stubbornly popular ever since D W Griffith in 1919 made the first organised crime flick, 'The Musketeers of Pig Alley'.
The advent of sound saw Warner Brothers, in particular, churn out gangster movies by the bellyful and the studio made stars out of Edward G Robinson, James Cagney and Humphrey Bogart with a slew of classic films like 'The G Men,' 'The Roaring Twenties,' 'The Public Enemy', 'White Heat' and 'Angels With Dirty Faces'.
In 1967, Arthur Penn heralded a more graphic style of gangster movie with 'Bonnie and Clyde' before Francis Coppola took up the baton with the operatic sweep of 'The Godfather' and 'The Godfather Part II', followed by Sergio Leone's masterful 'Once Upon A Time In America' and Martin Scorsese's groundbreaking 'Good Fellas'.
Now Warner Brothers is back in the Mob movie game, with Ruben Fleischer's 'Gangster Squad'.
Fleischer earned his directorial stripes four years ago with the comedy horror hit 'Zombieland' featuring Jesse Eisenberg, Emma Stone and Woody Harrelson.
It is clear the director is respectful of gangster movie history.
And so, 'Gangster Squad' apes the street smart dialogue of the old Warner Brothers' Cagney movies.
It adopts the look of Curtis Hanson's classy noir 'LA Confidential' and plays out a bit like Lee Tamahori's 'Mulholland Falls'.
It embellishes the tale of a real life Mobster, Mickey Cohen in much the same way as Brian de Palma's 'The Untouchables' played with the facts around Al Capone.
The real life Mickey Cohen was a Jewish mobster with a fierce reputation - an ex-prizefighter who turned to organised crime and was an associate of Al Capone, Meyer Lansky and Bugsy Siegel.
Cohen first cut his criminal teeth on the mean streets of Chicago and Cleveland before heading out west to Los Angeles and Las Vegas to keep an eye on Siegel for Lansky.
He made a fortune running gambling rackets but also showed a terrifying propensity for violence and an ability to avoid conviction for his most serious crimes, winding up for a spell in Alcatraz and eventually dying at home of natural causes.
Fans of Barry Levinson's 'Bugsy' will recall Harvey Keitel's tough talking Oscar nominated turn as Cohen opposite Warren Beatty as Bugsy Siegel.
But he also popped up in 'LA Confidential' in the guise of Paul Guilfoyle of 'C.S.I. Crime Scene Investigation' fame. Gaming fans will know he also features in the acclaimed video game 'LA Noire'.
For 'Gangster Squad', Fleischer turns to one of Hollywood's finest actors, Sean Penn to portray Cohen.
Penn, of course, is no stranger to the Mob drama as anyone who has seen his excellent performances in de Palma's stylish 'Carlito's Way' and Phil Joanou's Irish American gangster epic 'State of Grace' can testify.
And so he gamely dons prosthetics to play Cohen.
From the opening torture scene, we are left in no doubt Cohen is ruthless but represents something much more - the corrupt East Coast of the United States muscling in on the untamed, romanticised West.
Enter honest Irish American cop and World War II veteran, Sergeant John O'Mara, played by Josh Brolin, who witnesses one of Cohen's goons tricking a young woman fresh off the train in Los Angeles' Union Station into believing she is about to be screen tested by a Hollywood film studio.
The thug takes her to a downtown hotel when she is about to be raped, drugged and forced to work in a brothel.
O'Mara bursts into the building, beats up Cohen's sleazy punks and rescues the woman but helplessly watches as the criminals he arrests are set free by corrupt colleagues on the police force and a judiciary in Cohen's pocket.
It turns out O'Mara is not the only decent cop.
Nick Nolte's morally upright Chief of Police Bill Parker is also determined to prevent Cohen ruling Los Angeles and realises the only way to fight his criminal empire is to wage a guerrilla war destroying the gangster's enterprises.
He, therefore, asks O'Mara to assemble a covert team to do this dirty work, which initially comprises of Robert Patrick's old school Western gunslinger Detective Max Kennard, Anthony Mackie's Detective Rocky Washington who is handy with a knife and Giovanni Riblisi's wiretap expert Detective Conway Keeler.
Soon, Michael Pena's Detective Ramierez Navidad and Ryan Gosling's smooth talking Sergeant Jerry Wooters are along for the ride - the latter because he witnesses the slaying of an innocent shoe shine boy and is romantically involved with Cohen's moll, Emma Stone's Grace Faraday.
As I've already indicated, Fleischer's movie is very much the work of someone who clearly loves and respects the gangster genre.
However 'Gangster Squad' is almost too respectful to the point that it just feels like a mash up of scenes from gangster movies that we've all seen before.
And so we have a sweeping one take shot of Wooters entering Cohen's favourite nightclub, mimicking a similar scene with Ray Liotta's Henry Hill in 'Good Fellas'.
We also have an assassination attempt on Jon Polito's Mobster Jack Dragna that is reminiscent of the attempt to gun down Vito Corleone in 'The Godfather'.
There's a shootout on a staircase that looks like the train station gun battle in 'The Untouchables' and the muscular bull in a china shop antics of O'Mara are reminiscent of Russell Crowe's Wendell 'Bud' White in 'LA Confidential'.
Paying homage to your favourite films is fine - great directors like Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese and Neil Jordan do it all the time - but when that's all you've got it in your armoury, you end up firing blanks pretty quickly.
It doesn't help that the director and cast are lumbered with a weak and often very dull screenplay by Will Beall.
Fleischer clearly would love his film to be held up with the same respect as de Palma's 'The Untouchables' in 1987 but it lacks the narrative intelligence, the jaw dropping set pieces and the punchy speeches of that classic.
'The Untouchables' had the advantage of an extremely quotable script by one of America's finest playwrights, David Mamet which played with human frailties.
Unlike Kevin Costner, Andy Garcia, Robert de Niro and Sean Connery in de Palma's classic or Guy Pearce, Kevin Spacey, Russell Crowe and Kim Basinger in the smart screen adaptation of James Elroy's 'LA Confidential', there's no meaty dialogue for Penn, Gosling and Brolin to sink their teeth into.
There's no memorable sequence and the whole enterprise seems stale.
As a result we get cardboard performances from a cast that promises so much - with the exception of Robert Patrick whose character is the only one with a bit of life.
Penn and Gosling appear to be sleepwalking through the movie and Brolin is muscular but hard to engage with.
Penn and Gosling appear to be sleepwalking through the movie and Brolin is muscular but hard to engage with.
Penn's misfiring performance isn't helped by the fact that Harvey Keitel was so good as Cohen in 'Bugsy'.
And as the only prominent women characters, Emma Stone's Grace and Mireille Enos as O'Mara's wife Connie are also given little to work with.
While the action sequences are competently handled by the director and the period detail is fine, the movie feels like you are watching someone else play a video game. Such is the lack of empathy and tension you have for the characters.
If gangster movies in the 21st century are to pack a punch, they need to be smart and innovative, as we saw in September/October when Andrew Dominick gave us 'Killing Them Softly' with its new twist - the Mob movie as an allegory for the economic and moral decline of contemporary US society.
That's because on television, HBO has changed the game with the nuanced multi-stranded storylines of 'The Sopranos' and 'Boardwalk Empire'.
Dominik's angry movie - which disappointingly bombed in the United States - was a classic example of how, when faced with the epic sweep of television gangster shows, a film director, cast and crew can stretch themselves and come up with something that reinvents the genre.
The paucity of ideas in 'Gangster Squad', by way of contrast to Dominik's film, is simply depressing.
Despite having one of the most exciting casts of recent times, Fleischer has turned in the first big cinematic disappointment of 2013.
('Gangster Squad' opened in the Movie House and other UK and Irish cinemas on January 10, 2013. This review originally appeared on Eamonnmallie.com)
And as the only prominent women characters, Emma Stone's Grace and Mireille Enos as O'Mara's wife Connie are also given little to work with.
While the action sequences are competently handled by the director and the period detail is fine, the movie feels like you are watching someone else play a video game. Such is the lack of empathy and tension you have for the characters.
If gangster movies in the 21st century are to pack a punch, they need to be smart and innovative, as we saw in September/October when Andrew Dominick gave us 'Killing Them Softly' with its new twist - the Mob movie as an allegory for the economic and moral decline of contemporary US society.
That's because on television, HBO has changed the game with the nuanced multi-stranded storylines of 'The Sopranos' and 'Boardwalk Empire'.
Dominik's angry movie - which disappointingly bombed in the United States - was a classic example of how, when faced with the epic sweep of television gangster shows, a film director, cast and crew can stretch themselves and come up with something that reinvents the genre.
The paucity of ideas in 'Gangster Squad', by way of contrast to Dominik's film, is simply depressing.
Despite having one of the most exciting casts of recent times, Fleischer has turned in the first big cinematic disappointment of 2013.
('Gangster Squad' opened in the Movie House and other UK and Irish cinemas on January 10, 2013. This review originally appeared on Eamonnmallie.com)
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