A new writing segment, "Ten Items or Less" is an attempt to consciously cutback and restrict how much I write. I get ten sentences or less to discuss a movie. That's it. Let's see if some genius comes out of working around my self-made obstacle.
Gangster Squad was a movie designed to make a pretty great movie trailer, but everything in between those trailer-worthy moments is some carelessly thought out padding. The film feels under-written. The characters are all uninteresting and have spelled-out-in-bold-letters clear, but far too often contradictory, motivations, and the story seems as though it's missing a few key scenes. I could go on about the missing story beats or how those story beats it does have are woefully bland -- seriously, for a movie attempting to appropriate the supposed sexiness of the Roaring Twenties, Gangster Squad is a surprisingly dull and tedious film -- or how its characters are handled by its actors pretty terribly -- Ryan Gosling and Sean Penn have some atrocious, overstated affected accents that are laughably unnecessary -- but lets get to the more, um, subtle problems to the film. The film is top-to-bottom filled with gender politics that at best overly simplified and at worst slightly offensive. Gangster Squad has a terrible representation of women, and that's when it's representing them at all; Emma Stone, in a miserably one note role, is one of two female characters. Though it has a diverser cast than most films, it still has racial stereotypes and biases -- the film has some embarrassing moments in its treatment of its sole Hispanic character. If you can make it through its plodding plot, Gangster Squad has a handful of somewhat entertaining action scenes, but you can watch the trailer and get that experience in a fraction of the time and pain.
Grade: 1.5/4 ★
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