Gangster Squad is a 2013 American crime action-thriller film directed by Ruben Fleischer and written by Will Beall, loosely based on a non-fiction book by Paul Lieberman. The film stars Josh Brolin, Ryan Gosling, Nick Nolte, Emma Stone, Anthony Mackie, Giovanni Ribisi, Robert Patrick, Michael Peña, and Sean Penn. Set in 1949, the film follows a group of real-life LAPD officers and detectives, the Gangster Squad, who are assigned to bring down crime kingpin Mickey Cohen.
After the script spent several years on the Black List, production began in September 2011 around Los Angeles, lasting through December. Despite the film originally scheduled to be released in theaters on September 7, 2012, the movie theater shooting in Aurora, which occurred seven weeks prior, led Warner Bros. Pictures to delay the film's theatrical release until January 11, 2013, allowing the production team to perform re-shoots to overwrite the old sequence from which the gangsters open fire at the Grauman's Chinese Theatre. Gangster Squad received mixed reviews from critics and grossed $105 million worldwide.
In 1949, Los Angeles, crime boss Mickey Cohen became the most powerful figure in the underworld in California and intended to expand his criminal enterprise to encompass the entire West Coast. The LAPD has not been able to stop his ruthless rise, as he has eliminated witnesses, hired dirty cops to protect his activities, and avoided prosecution through spreading corruption in the justice system. For starters, World War II OSS veteran Sergeant John O'Mara brought down Cohen's prostitution building and arrested the perps, only for them to be released early into Cohen's care, until Cohen had them killed in a fire. Determined to put an end to Cohen and his dirty business empire, LAPD Chief Bill Parker creates a covert undercover unit, tasked with dismantling Cohen's dirty enterprise, and puts O'Mara in charge of the Squad. The unit, composed of officers who do not carry badges and are authorized to act outside of the law. With the help of his pregnant wife Connie, O'Mara recruited fellow war veteran Detective Jerry Wooters and four incorruptible misfit officers: knife-wielding Lieutenant Coleman Harris, wiretapping expert and family man Conwell Keeler, outlaw sharpshooter Max Kennard, and Kennard's rookie protégé Navidad RamÃÂrez.
Despite initial setbacks, such as a casino raid thwarted by corrupt Burbank cops, the Squad struck several successful blows at the heart of Cohen's operations, including shutting down his lucrative wire gambling business. They broke into Cohen's mansion, and Keeler planted a bug in the back of a television. As a result, Cohen believed someone had betrayed him and lashed out at those inside his dirty business empire, including his etiquette tutor, Grace Faraday. Wooters and Faraday have entered into a secret romantic relationship, and he tries to help her escape from Cohen, enlisting the help of mutual friend and gangster Jack Whalen. Realizing the attackers had never stolen his money and only torched it, Cohen deduces they were cops and realized that they had bugged his house. Cohen gave false information to lure the Squad into an unsuccessful ambush in Chinatown while Keeler is garroted by a hitman. O'Mara's home is hit in a drive-by in which Connie survived, but resulted in her giving birth to her and John's newborn son. When Faraday witnesses Cohen murder Whalen, she offers to testify against him. O'Mara forced the crooked Judge Carter to sign an arrest warrant before leading the Squad to the Park Plaza Hotel to arrest Mickey Cohen.
Cohen and his men engage in a lengthy shootout with the Squad, during which Wooters and Kennard are wounded. Cohen and his bodyguard, Karl Lennox, escape, but O'Mara rammed their vehicle into a fountain. Navidad helped a dying Kennard shoot Lennox, saving O'Mara. Cohen and O'Mara engage in a brutal bare-knuckle brawl while onlookers and reporters gather. O'Mara finally defeated Cohen and had him arrested, ending his dirty business empire reigning over LA. The film explains that the Gangster Squad has never been mentioned for its role in keeping the underworld from gaining a foothold in LA, and that its surviving members remain extremely secret 'till this day. Mickey Cohen is sentenced to life imprisonment at Alcatraz, where he is greeted with a lead-pipe beating by inmates who were friends of Whalen. Harris and RamÃÂrez partner together to walk the beat, Wooters and Faraday continue their relationship, and O'Mara quits his job with the LAPD to live a peaceful and quiet life with his wife and child.
Principal photography began on September 6, 2011, in Los Angeles. Sets were located all over Los Angeles County, from north of the San Fernando Valley to south of the county border. Sets were also recreated in Sony Pictures Studios in Culver City. Filming wrapped on December 15, 2011.
The first trailer for Gangster Squad was released on , 2012. In the wake of the theater shooting in Aurora, Colorado, on July 20, it was pulled from running before films and airing on television, and removed from Apple's trailer site and YouTube due to a scene where characters fire submachine guns at movie-goers through the screen of Grauman's Chinese Theatre.
It was later reported that the theater scene from the film would be either removed or placed in a different setting, since it is a crucial part of the film, and the film would undergo additional re-shoots of several scenes to accommodate these changes, which resulted in the film's release being moved to a later date. About a week after the Aurora shootings, Warner Bros. officially confirmed that the film would be released on January 11, 2013, after its original planned release for September 2012. Two weeks later, on August 22, the cast reunited in Los Angeles to completely re-shoot the film's main action sequence. The new sequence was set in a version of Chinatown, where the gangsters strike back at the Squad. Josh Brolin said he was not sad the original scene was cut and admitted that the new version would be just as violent as the original. Since the original cinematographer was no longer available, the new sequence was shot by Caleb Deschanel.
Gangster Squad grossed $46 million in the United States and Canada, and $59.2 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $105.2 million, against a production budget of $60 million.
The film grossed $17.1 million in its opening weekend, finishing third at the box office behind Zero Dark Thirty and A Haunted House. It then made $8.6 million in its second weekend (including $10.1 million over the four-day MLK weekend) and $4.3 million in its third weekend.
Gangster Squad was released on DVD and Blu-ray on April 23, 2013, by Warner Home Video. The Blu-ray includes director's commentary from Ruben Fleischer and several segments about the real life men and stories of the Gangster Squad and Mickey Cohen. As of June 2013, it had made $9.6 million from DVD sales and $6.7 million from Blu-ray, for a total of $16.3 million in sales.
On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 30% based on 204 reviews, with an average rating of 5/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "Though it's stylish and features a talented cast, Gangster Squad suffers from lackluster writing, underdeveloped characters, and an excessive amount of violence." On Metacritic, it has a weighted average score of 40 out of 100, based on 38 critics, indicating "mixed or average" reviews. Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave it an average grade of "B+" on an A+ to F scale.
Reviewers at Spill.com gave it a "Rental," praising its stylish design but criticizing the dialogue, Emma Stone's underdeveloped "damsel-in-distress" character, and Sean Penn's laughable makeup. IGN editor Chris Tilly wrote, "Gangster Squad looks great but frustrates because with the talent involved, it had the potential to be so much more", and rated it 6.3/10. Richard Roeper gave it a B+, saying "Gangster Squad is a highly stylized, pulp-fiction period piece based on true events" and noted its strong performances.
Filling in for Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times, Jeff Shannon gave the film 2 stars out of 4, saying that Fleischer, better known for his comedic work, was "out of his element, and barely suppressing his urge to spoof the genre". He further criticized the stock characters and the film's generally uneven tone, but praised action highlights such as the car chase and flashes of brilliance in Sean Penn's performance.
Although the film is inspired by the real-life LAPD Gangster Squad, much of it is fabricated.