Gangster Squad

Directed by Ruben Fleischer

(R)

**

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The best that can be said about this pulpy gangster movie is that it is “not a complete waste of time,” said Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times. Its inspired-by-real-events story about a rising L.A. mob boss who starts a war with his East Coast overseers won’t teach you much about late-1940s Mafia history. But this empty-headed picture at least “offers the marginal pleasure of an all-star cast slumming their way through a thicket of routine plotting, almost laughable dialogue, and the constant blaze of Tommy guns.” When one good cop (Josh Brolin) puts together a team of crime fighters to take down Sean Penn’s “maniacal” kingpin, we do get one enjoyable detour, said Ann Hornaday in The Washington Post. As the mobster’s mistress and the police sergeant who falls for her, Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling briefly “luxuriate in the chemistry” they conjured in 2011’s Crazy, Stupid, Love. Then we’re back to the shooting and the macho posturing, and it’s all “oddly entertaining,” said Connie Ogle in The Miami Herald. “Loud, brash, and utterly ridiculous,” Gangster Squad is throwaway fun.