Gangster Squad

Manifest Density
or
The War for the Soul of Los Angeles (such as it is)

Ruben Fleischer's third film (after the very good Zombieland and the excremental 30 Minutes or Less) is Gangster Squad, a Hollywoodized version of the efforts by the LAPD to take down the efforts of Mickey Cohen, the lieutenant of Bugsy Siegel's Jewish mafia, who took over Siegel's interests when the mob kingpin was murdered in 1947.

If one is looking for a history lesson, one should look elsewhere.  This is a glamorized, fictionalized version of the events set in some art-deco post-war version of Los Angeles that doesn't seem to have existed anywhere except the Warner Brothers gangster films and Brian de Palma's The Untouchables, to which this film owes a great debt.  The gangsters all wear dark clothes with long coats (the better to identify them) and are all greasy and ugly, while the police are all good-looking guys in nice suits who bend the rules a bit (with the possible exception of Chief Parker, played with a gruff somnambulance by Nick Nolte, who headed up the similar "Hat Squad" in Lee Tamahori's Mulholland Falls).*

It all feels very false, from how the gangsters rarely hit anything despite the thousands of rounds shot from tommy guns, and the Gangster Squad "hit" ratio usually fares better.  The Squad (hand-picked by the leader's wife, played by Mireille Anos, for being rough-necks and not promotion-headed top-of-their-classers) consists of boss John O'Mara (who did exist, but did not run the unit) as played by Josh Brolin, Jerry Wooters (played by Ryan Gosling), Max Kennard (Robert Patrick)—a sharpshooter, Conway Keeler (Giovanni Ribisi) a surveillance/electronics expert, as well as two PC members for the 21st century audience—Anthony Mackie (so good in The Adjustment Bureau) and Michael Peña.   Their target is Mickey Cohen (Sean Penn in a make-up that makes him look like he walked out of Warren Beatty's Dick Tracy), who's reputation is movie-inflated to make him seem like he's an empire-building Al Capone, rather than the cheap hood with star connections he ultimately was.

Fleischer is more interested in flash than being true to the source.  His fights are surprisingly well-staged, one shot per flying fist, but not Bourne-edited so one can easily follow it—an early fight in an elevator borrows heavily from a similar scene in a James Bond movie but actually goes places the 007 film merely used for suspense.  Once in awhile, he'll go for a Matrix-y slo-sloo-slooo-mo effect (rather than a fleeting Peckinpah image) just to make a point of something, like cartridges flying out of a machine gun, or a Christmas ornament exploding due to gunfire, but it's just slowing things down as opposed to telling a story.  Brolin's fine, nuanced even, but Gosling's McQueen-ish hipster act is wearing a little thin, and the chemistry exhibited between he and Emma Stone from Crazy, Stupid Love is completely missing here.  Mackie, Peña, and Patrick are far more engaging probably because they don't fit the established mold. 

It's entertaining, to a certain extent, but one gets the feeling, after patterns have been set that bring to mind other films, that one is being sold a bill of goods, and we are.  

The real-life Cohen was convicted of tax evasion (not murder) in 1950, serving four years.  Upon his release, he established several businesses (the ones portrayed in the film) and was again convicted of tax evasion in 1961 and released (again) in 1972.  Cohen died in his sleep in 1976.

Gangster Squad is a Rental.

The real Mickey Cohen, photographed in 1950

The real "Gangster Squad"

* Amusingly, his driver is Officer Darryl Gates (played by Josh Pence) who would be Chief from 1978 to 1992.

Tropic Thunder

"Nobody Goes Full-Retard"

There's a good idea in Ben Stiller's "Tropic Thunder," a comic story about a trio of self-indulgent actors making a Viet-Nam era war film. By a Machiavellian director's conceit, they end up abandoned in a jungle pursued by drug traffickers, with nothing but their persona's to protect them.* The film tosses in more inside jokes than a "Scary Movie" installment, and some of them turn out to be actually funny.

The trouble is the film itself is top-lined by self-indulgent actors all vying for screen-time to see how broadly they can play their parts. It's meant to be satire, and it's plenty satirical, as long as Stiller, Downey, Black and Cruise are making fun of the Hollywood excesses of...other actors.** But one is reminded of a less-disciplined, unfunny version of "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World" in the broadness of the playing, and heavy-handedness with which its presented. Imagine "Dr. Strangelove" if every performance had the wing-nut intensity of George C. Scott's. "Tropic Thunder" brays and screeches constantly, it's soundtrack thudding with an annoying loudness for scenes even taking place in the quiet of night. There might have been some worry on the studio's part about letting the movie breathe, or fear that the pace might slacken. All well and semi-good. But it gives the film the light and airy feeling of a train barrelling into a brick wall. And the frenetic style and the frequent unintelligibility of the actors makes it a frustrating movie-going experience.

Still, there are moments: the movie starts with a commercial and previews for films featuring the characters in the film, and they are inspired little mini-movies that skewer trailer-style, as well as Hollywood hype. None too subtle, but they're mercifully short and focused. Then there's the performance of Matthew McConaughey, as the distracted agent of Stiller's Tugg Speedman, a breezy graceful performance that's funny and relaxed, but just as nuanced as the other, more aggressive performances.

At the opposite end of the scale is Cruise's studio-headcase Les Grossman. Made up with a balding pate and fat-suit, it's played with a giddily vulgar intensity that's pure hyper-Cruise; one wonders if Tom can play a real human being anymore, or for that, even recognize one. Still, it's quite the artery-popping performance.

But ultimately one is left with a bunch of absurdist little off-ramps that go no where, as in the dramatic send-up typical of the testosterone-weeper when Tugg implores Lazarus, "You tell the world what happened here!"

A puzzled look passes over Lazarus' face: "What happened here?"

"I don't know" is the reply.

I found myself laughing at the vacuousness of the exchange, but now, in retrospect, I regret it. Maybe I was desperate for a laugh at that point.

At one point Speedman and Lazarus are discussing acting techniques, and the former brings up a disastrous attempt at a feel-good Oscar-bait film playing a disabled person. "Everybody knows you don't go full-retard," says Lazarus. "Autistic, yes. Imbecilic, yes. Full-retard, no."

And yet they made this movie, anyway.

"Tropic Thunder" is a cable-watcher.

*What's really funny about the script is the cribbing of the making of "Apocalypse Now." Back in the early stages of Francis Ford Coppola's American Zoetrope film factory, the plan was for screenwriter John Milius and director George Lucas to make the film "guerrilla-style" by actually dropping the actors and a skeleton crew in Viet-Nam to make the movie. Today, Lucas admits the idea was crazy. Milius still imagines it as a lost opportunity for adventure.

** It's pretty obvious who is being made fun of here: Stiller makes a wicked stab at Cruise mannerisms, Downey is tweaking Russell Crowe and heavy-method actors--his Aussie Kirk Lazarus undergoes treatments to turn his skin black and never breaks character from a dialect straight out of Amos n' Andy, and Jack Black is one of the long line of overweight, drug-addicted comedians on a short fuse. And though Cruise has cause to lampoon Summer Redstone, his movie mogul is more in the Weinstein mode (and is supposedly based on Stiller's production partner Stuart Cornfeld).

Wilhelm Alert: @ 2:25 into the film proper (if you can call it that)

Cannery Row

"Cannery Row" (David S. Ward, 1982) Quirky adaptation of John Steinbeck's sublime tales of the Monterey Dock District* that didn't do well at the box-office despite one of Nick Nolte's best performances, and an early starring performance by Debra Winger.

"Doc" (Nolte) is a marine biologist living a spartan existence on the row, but he's still the king in a society of wharf-bums and hookers. Like any good eco-system, there is a harmony amongst the denizens with a loose-knit economic system of favors performed and the occassional get-rich-quick scheme.

But the introduction of a new critter can upset any established ecology, and so the arrival of Suzy DeSoto (Winger) causes havoc within the community. She's a good kid down on her luck who catches "Doc's" eye, though he's afraid to commit, content to merely observe and annotate. She fails miserably at hooking, though, inspiring the madam, Fauna (Audra Lindley), to crass attempts at match-making. Comfortable nowhere, but with no ability to leave, she makes a home in a large, abandoned storage-tank and settles for a kind of independence.

It's a ruefully funny semi-tall tale sublimely told with an ironic narration by the honey-magnolia tones of John Huston. The cast is full of slovenly cherubic character actors who would fir well into a John Ford stock company--Frank McRae, M. Emmett Walsh, Tom Mahoney and John Malloy. "Cannery Row" is a bit like a Ford film as it deals with community and the integration of a new-comer into the fold, and how the community reacts to them and also how that community reacts to crisis.

"Cannery Row" is one of those films I love. Every viewing of it is like seeing an old friend.

* They comprise the novels "Cannery Row" and its sequel "Sweet Thursday"