Gangster Squad (2013)

Starring: Josh Brolin, Ryan Gosling, Sean Penn, Nick Nolte, Emma Stone, Anthony Mackie, Giovanni Ribisi, Michael Peña, Robert Patrick

Director: Ruben Fleischer

Genre: Action, Crime, Drama

Rating: C+

I'm going to predicate this by saying that while I'm not exactly giving this a good review, I did enjoy it.  Gangster Squad was definitely over hyped and possibly even wrongly promoted, and as such going into it I was expecting one type of movie and got something a bit different.  This is a movie created by the guy who did Zombieland, and as such it's a movie like Zombieland kind of trying to be a movie like Godfather or something similar.  As such, it kind of ends up in between the two, to the detriment of the film, although throughout it it still manages to be entertaining and fun.

Gangster Squad is the kind of true, but not really, story of Mickey Cohen (Penn) and the police officers who formed a squad, the Gangster Squad, to stop him.  The head of this squad is Sergeant John O'Mara (Brolin), a decorated war hero who doesn't fit into the L.A. police scene simply because he won't take bribes and wants to persecute Cohen and his thugs.  O'Mara is joined by detective Coleman Harris (Mackie), wire-tapper Conway Keeler (Ribisi), gunslinger Max Kennard (Patrick), and his partner Navidad Ramirez (Peña).  His friend, Jerry Wooters (Gosling), who has rejected an offer to join the squad, meanwhile is carrying on an affair with Cohen's lover, Grace Faraday (Stone).

Okay, so let's see.  The action was fun, I enjoyed it.  With the exception of the Chinatown incident it all really flowed well and was, while not exactly believable, definitely entertaining.  There were a few moments that were a bit hockey, and a few add ins that made me feel like the film was trying to be the 1960s Batman - more than once I almost expected a "POW" to be displayed across the screen - but for the most part it was fun.  The humour was good too and really on key.  It wasn't an overly funny movie, but there were definitely a number of points when someone would say something that made me smile or chuckle a little.

I really liked the relationship between O'Mara and his wife, played by Mireille Enos, and really wanted more of it.  From the get go I felt the love and chemistry between the two of them and I worried about what was going to happen to each of them, and between each of them, more than any other character.  Actually, with all honesty, the only other characters that I really cared about here were the ones played by Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone - although more because I like the actors themselves than because of any development of their relationship.  I do think that Gosling's Jerry was developed, and I really enjoyed the character, but Stone's Grace was less developed, and their relationship... somehow, despite the fact that I already know the two as a couple from Crazy, Stupid, Love and know that they can have amazing chemistry, the two don't really have chemistry here.  It's lacking, which sucks.  I want to see more from the two of them as a couple in this film so that I could really love them as a couple.  And now I just want to go watch Crazy, Stupid, Love again.  I will stick this out there, though, if you're filming a movie with Ryan Gosling and Sean Penn in it one of them should appear shirtless and the other should not.  I'm sorry, Gangster Squad, but you made the wrong decision there.

Men in Black 3 (2012)

Stars: Will Smith, Tommy Lee Jones, Josh Brolin, Jemaine Clement, Emma Thompson, Michael Stuhbarg
Director: Barry Sonnenfeld
Genre: Action, Comedy, Sci-Fi
Rating: B-

This was another one of those films that surprised me.  I went in with really low expectations – I didn’t even want to see it (I made a hard fight to see Dark Shadows instead, but we ended up arriving at the theatre after it had started).  Yet, despite the fact that I didn’t really want to see it and had very low expectations for it, I was pleasantly surprised by Men in Black 3, although perhaps this was in part the result of my low expectations.

At the start of the film Agents K (Jones) and L (Smith) have been working together for fourteen years (paying no attention to the fact that in the five year gap between MIB and MIB2 K was retired and had no memories of the MIB), although they still have secrets between them.  J continually nags at K to reveal more of his past to him, with K very much ignoring him in a manner that you would very much expect of Tommy Lee Jones.  That all changes when alien Boris the Animal (Clement) travels back in time and kills K on July 16, 1969.  It is up to J to travel back in time and work with a young K (Brolin) and alien Griffin (Stuhbarg), who sees all possible futures, in order to ensure that the future that happens is the one that J knows.

Let’s start with the easy stuff and work our way to the more complicated bits.  The comedy in MIB3 was great.  Jones and Brolin both make a good straight man to Smith’s funny man.  Thompson was hilarious, proving yet again that you cannot go wrong casting her in a movie (seriously, has she been in any bad movies? Any?).  I was a bit disappointed that some of the comic relief aliens from the earlier films played a much smaller role in this one, and that Frank the pug wasn’t shown at all.  The casting in general, though, was great.  As already mentioned, Emma Thompson was amazing.  Brolin really surprised me as well, the way in which he played a younger version of Jones was incredible.  They even sounded alike; at one point I wondered if Jones had done a voice over for Brolin’s part.  The character of Griffin was absolutely adorable and nicely done.

Now, on to the big stuff: The time travel aspect of the film was handled really well, although there were a few plot holes, especially in regards to just how J is recruited in the first place of K died in 1969.  I also really disliked how little reference they made to the fact that Smith is black and travelling to 1969.  There are a couple comments about it, but for the most part the problems that he’d face are ignored.  Likewise, Mike Colter is cast as a colonel working at NASA when there is no way in hell that would have happened in 1969.  It’s almost as if the film wanted to, pardon the expression, white wash American history while pretending to pay lip service to it.  The one really big problem with this film is just how much it ignores story established in MIB2.  While the second film in the series really wasn’t good, it almost seems like the directors and producers decided to ignore its existence (which is a bit ridiculous, given as it’s the same people who did the first two films).  Oh, on a concluding note, as awesome as Thompson was, I did have to question the decision to cast her as a romantic interest of sorts, and long time colleague of Jones.  Not only is there a bit of an age difference between the two (15 years), but he looks a fair bit older than he is and she looks a bit younger than she is, making it a bit weird.  The romantic interest of sorts is one thing, the long term colleague (Thompson's character, Agent O, is portrayed in 1969), another.