Ruben (Zombieland) Fleischer helms Gangster Squad, a loose adaptation of award-winning journalist Paul Lieberman’s book on the kingpins of the dangerous netherworld of Los Angeles (Spanish for The Angels) And what a gritty, brutal and a salutary lesson it is for the Establishment (and dare I say it, Indian cops in particular) to see how organised crime can be brought low.
Hollywood has more often than not, glamorised mobsters through actors like Humphrey Bogart, James Cagney and Robert de Niro but Fleischer doesn’t, notwithstanding the star cast of Sean Penn, Ryan Gosling, Josh Brolin and Nick Nolte who played the head of a group of four Los Angeles Police Department detectives (based on the real life “Hat Squad”) who will stop at nothing to maintain law and order.
In Gangster Squad, Nolte plays Chief Bill Parker who green signals a secretive vigilante unit led by Sgt. John O’Mara (Brolin ) whose wife is a strong nurturing and highly intelligent woman. She’s a good woman as Emma Stone’s Grace Faraday is not. For Grace is the mistress of the ruthless, unforgiving mobster Mickey Cohen who has made a fortune from blackmail, black-marketing, extortion, prostitution and drugs.
Hollywood celebs like Judy Garland, Frank Sinatra and Peter Lawford are rumoured to have asked him for (and granted him) favours. The Rev. Billy Graham even tried to convert him (Cohen was Jewish) but failed. Intriguingly, dazzling movie stars and evangelists apart, not even Cohen’s associate Johnny Stompanato (who was stabbed to death by the daughter of his actress-lover Lana Turner ) don’t figure in this fictionalised account. It’s possible the screenwriters/ director thought it would detract from the principal characters, the squad and their target, Cohen who as played by the peerless Sean Penn, looms head and shoulders above the dangerlok in this colourful chronicle of the LAPD’s fight in the 1940s and 50s to wrest back their city from the stranglehold of the East Coast Mafia bosses.
Cohen has wrapped his tentacles around the city with the help of not only his violent hirelings, but also corrupt cops and politicians. But some cops are incorruptible and can’t be bought. Chief Parker, ex soldier John O’Mara (Brolin) womaniser Jerry Wooters (Gosling), ace gunfighter Max Kennard (Robert Patrick) his rookie partner in arms Navidad Ramirez (Pena) electronics surveillance expert Conway Keeler (Giovanni Ribisi ) and tough cop Coleman Harris (Anthony Mackie) join the fight, the good fight against evil.
The battle, I should point out, is vicious, nasty, ugly. The acting and production design is beautiful. But let me NOT tell you the gruesome ways in which some people are despatched to their eternal rest. Parts of the narrative may be clichéd. But me, I refuse to run down a movie, which perfectly captures the wonder of good triumphing over evil.
ronitatorcato@yahoo.co.in
