Dinesh Kamath's column on Hollywood movie 'Gangster Squad' which was published in Newsband

Gangster Squad is a crime film directed by Ruben Fleischer, from a screenplay written by Will Beall, starring Josh Brolin, Ryan Gosling, Nick Nolte, Emma Stone, and Sean Penn.

It is the story of LAPD Detectives who are attempting to keep Los Angeles free of gangsters during the 1940s and '50s. The film will release on January 11, 2013.

The movie has an interesting plot. It is a chronicle of the LAPD's fight to keep East Coast Mafia types out of Los Angeles in the 1940s and 50s as six police officers and detectives must protect the law by breaking it, taking on Mickey Cohen and his gang.

The film has Josh Brolin as Sgt. John O'Mara, Ryan Gosling as Sgt. Jerry Wooters, Sean Penn as Mickey Cohen, Nick Nolte as Chief Bill Parker, Emma Stone as Grace Faraday, Anthony Mackie as Det. Rocky Washington, Giovanni Ribisi as Det. Conway Keeler, Michael Peña as Det. Navidad Ramirez, Robert Patrick as Det. Max Kennard, Josh Pence as Daryl Gates, Frank Grillo as Jimmy Reagan, Mireille Enos as Connie O'Mara, James Hébert as Mitch Racine, Haley Strode as Marcia Keeler, Sullivan Stapleton as Jack Whalen, Maxwell Perry Cotton as Charlie, Lucy Walsh as Manicurist, Troy Garity as One-Eyed Assassin, James Carpinello as Johnny Stompanato, Jon Polito as Jack Dragna, Holt McCallany as Karl Lennox and Wade Williams as Rourke.

The first trailer for Gangster Squad was released on May 9, 2012. In the wake of the theater shooting in Aurora, Colorado on July 20, the trailer was pulled from running before films and airing on television, and removed from Apple's trailer site and YouTube due to a scene in which characters shoot submachine guns at moviegoers through the screen of Grauman's Chinese Theatre.

It was later reported that the theater scene from the film will be either removed or placed in a different setting, since it is a crucial part of the film, and the film will undergo additional re-shoots of several scenes to accommodate these changes, which would result in the release of Gangster Squad to be moved back to a later date. About a week after the shootings in Aurora, Warner officially confirmed that the film will be released on January 11, 2013, bumped from the original September 7, 2012 release date. However, they still have not commented on whether the film will be released unedited or undergo a re-cut/re-shoot of the scene.

Gangster Squad is a sensationalistic fantasy about how a clandestine unit of LAPD fuzz supposedly brought Mickey Cohen, California's baddest gangster, to his knees in the late '40s. Made up of synthetics rather than whole cloth, this lurid concoction superficially gets by thanks to a strong cast and jazzy period detail.

The film still features plenty of extra-imaginative barbarity, beginning in the opening scene with Cohen splitting a poor sap in two by attaching him to cars pulling in opposite directions up near the Hollywoodland sign.

Former L.A. homicide detective Will Beall's adaptation of veteran Los Angeles Times writer Paul Lieberman's 2012 nonfiction book has more to do with movie lore than with what really happened, pitting a Magnificent Seven-type group of do-gooders against mobsters trying to take over the town after World War II.

The film has plenty of incidents, all portrayed in a brutal modern fashion rather than in a style one would ever associate with the noirish films of the era itself or with the more recent tangy, nostalgic evocations of it. Constrained from going after Cohen (Sean Penn) and his goons due to a widely corrupt police force, new LAPD chief William Parker (Nick Nolte) recruits a special squad that will operate on the QT to stop Cohen from taking over the city completely.

 Heading up the team is straight-arrow Sgt. John O'Mara (Josh Brolin), a war hero ready to fight the bad guys on the homefront after whipping the enemy overseas. Signing up in due course are Sgt. Jerry Wooters (Ryan Gosling), whose womanizing skills come in handy to lure Cohen's current flame Grace Faraday (Emma Stone) into their game; Central Avenue black beat cop Coleman Harris (Anthony Mackie); old cowboy sharpshooter Max Kennard (Robert Patrick); eavesdropping technology expert Conwell Keeler (Giovanni Ribisi); and rookie Latino tag-along Navidad Ramirez (Michael Pena). These are good actors.

While they're getting organized, Cohen, a scrappy former boxer from the East who already runs drug, prostitution and extortion rackets, is ready to make his big move: to control all the wire bookmaking west of Chicago. Half the town seems to be on his payroll, and when anyone takes even one step out of line or fails him, Cohen goes berserk and has someone put a power drill through his head.

In the film, Cohen has been made an undiluted psychotic with no compensating charm or charisma. Most accounts of the real guy refer to how entertaining he was, how he catered to celebrities, journalists and politicians and was courted by them in return. Reportedly, he mostly kept his dark side hidden, whereas Penn, looking not unlike Dorian Gray's portrait, plays him exclusively as a raving homicidal maniac who might even have given the Nazi hierarchy pause.

O'Mara's crew begins with somewhat ill-planned lightning assaults on Cohen, knowing it will come down to a race between their success in shutting him down and the gangster's discovery of who's on his tail. On a moment-to-moment basis, the film is OK; Gosling and Stone work very well together, and her character's precarious slither from Cohen's clutches to Jerry's embrace generates modest tension, while Mireille Enos brings great warmth and a surprising amount of honest emotion to the potentially hackneyed part of O'Hara's worried pregnant wife.

Ultimately, Gangster Squad is all about instant gratification, almost as much for the characters as for the viewer. The film pays corny lip service to the idea that, by using thuggish, extra-legal tactics, the off-the-grid cops are lowering themselves to the same level as the gangsters they're pursuing. Everything about the film so fully endorses their Wild West methods.

On a production level, considerable effort has been expended to reproduce Hollywood Boulevard and other city environs the way they supposedly looked in the transitional days and nights of the late 1940s; there's plenty of local color to feast upon.

So do watch the film Gangster Squad. You’ll like it.