Mark Simmons

Gangster Squad

A little joke to warm up the review:

‘The other day my boss asked me to get an Italian organized crime secret society, although thinking about it he might have said the mop’

This movie is about the Los Angeles police department’s lawless operations to take down Mickey Cohen’s (Seann Penn) crime syndicate. Cohen is hell bent on taking control of L.A. and will do anything to show his rivals in Chicago he means business. This is shown in the opening scene where he straps a Chicago mobster by his limbs to a couple of cars and then tears him in two. I don’t think the victim was too worried at first; he thought Mickey was just pulling his leg. 

He then calls his wolves over to feast on the remains, I wouldn’t have been too happy with that meal, just a load of random strips of meat, what a rip off.  

Throughout the film Cohen demonstrates his no nonsense/no weakness policy in that if any of his employees don’t perform well, he kills them. You couldn’t do this is any other business, if they did QPR would be fielding a different side every week. 

To put an end to this reign of hell, Police chief (Nick Nolte) instructs Sgt John O’Mara (Josh Brolin) to form the Gangster Squad. O’Mara isn’t particularly bright and takes Cohen on guns blazing. His first move was to take down Cohen’s Casino, which goes wrong as they are met by a load of on duty police officers. To be fair to him the odds on them being there were unlikely, but was still a bit of a gamble, and so resulted in them dicing with death.

The way they knew what Cohen’s next moves were was by bugging his TV, although the television didn’t appear too irritated.

The film climax is a very original final fight scene which is in no way influences by (insert name of any 80/90’s action movie) where O’Mara throws his gun to the side and takes on Cohen in fisty cuffs. 

I give this movie 7 marks(immons) out of 10