Gangster Squad is the work of Ruben Fleischer, who’s only prior notable film is Zombieland, which was certainly unique and funny in a campy way. In Gangster Squad, he has taken a script by untested screenwriters and turned it into a high-profile mob movie with big stars and lots of hype.
Sean Penn as Micky Cohen being chased by Josh Brolin (John O’Mara), Ryan Gosling and Giovanni Ribisi and Emma Stone playing love interest to Penn and Gosling simultaneously is hard to beat. But the critics seem to hate this one, giving it a Metascore of only 40, with the NY Times and WSJ only averaging 20 between them. Pretty surprising given the cast and probably why they launched in the early awards season when almost nothing else is coming out.
This is the story of the post-war Elliot Ness of L.A. Trying to keep Micky Cohen from controlling everything from drugs to prostitution to book running. And like the Untouchables, this was a “no holds barred” approach that skirted the boundaries of the law to accomplish the professed justice.
This was not The Untouchables, it was not Bugsy, it was not even Boardwalk Empire, but it wasn’t bad enough to warrant getting trashed by the critics like this. It feels a bit like the pack-of-wolves approach that sometimes happens against a fund manager that the other counterparties in the market just don’t like and want to take out of the play. It’s always an insider story that is hard to uncover that causes it, but this has all the earmarks of a short squeeze.