Rating of
1.5/4
Watch the films this one copied instead.......
Matt - wrote on 05/20/13
Take The Untouchables, L.A. Confidential, Chinatown, etc, and throw 'em all in a blender but get rid of the all the great qualities of those films while dumbing it down to an incredible level with cheesy gimmicks to appeal to people who can't watch anything that requires the least bit of thought or taste and you have "Gangster Squad". Don't get me wrong, it IS entertaining. But I also find godawful B movies entertaining so that isn't saying much. The problem is that we've seen this film before several times but done MUCH BETTER. No truly memorable characters, cheesy dialog, Penn and Nolte are ridiculously over the top with their cartooney accents, poor plot/character development, all plague what could have been a very good film had they found a REAL director to take charge instead of Ruben Fleischer who got his start in music videos which is all you need to know. I was expecting this to be mediocre yet still came away disappointed. Flashy Noir style, photography and shootouts aren't enough to save it. Not terrible but not good either. In a nutshell, when you have FAR SUPERIOR flicks like I mentioned above to choose from, why even bother?
