Gangster Squad

Rating 7 out of 10

The first big movie of 2013 is here.  While I'm not usually a big fan of that gangster genre of movies as those go Gangster Squad is pretty good.  It's the late 1940s Los Angeles.  The war is over and Hollywood is starting to boom.  Everyone smokes and gangsters from the East are moving in to get part of the gold. They are led by the evil Mickey Cohen (Sean Penn).  The bad guys run wild as they own most of the police and several of the judges.  Everyone is too scared to be a witness against them.

The Police Chief is one of the few honest cops.  He turns to ex-military hero and now police Sgt. John O'Mara (Josh Brolin) to put together a secret group of off the grid cops to take Cohen down.  We get thirty minutes of O'Mara selecting his crew.  Ryan Gosling is especially good as the officer that thinks too much with his private parts getting mixed up with Cohen's lady squeeze (Emma Stone).

Lots of action.  Some brutality.  Not for the squeamish.  It's not ground breaking for this type of movie, but it keeps you entertained.  Lots of good character actors.  If you watched the trailer and liked what you saw you will most likely leave the theater feeling you got your monies worth.