A FILM REVIEW OF "BULLET TO THE HEAD" (2013)

Watching the Sylvester Stallone shoot’em up “Bullet to the Head” (**** OUT OF ****) felt like a blast from the past.  This polished but predictable anthology of action movie clichés contains several R-rated, close-quarters, combat scenes with sufficient amounts of blood splatter and gore; some high-octane, fireball explosions; lots of snappy tough guy banter; and surprising displays of frontal female nudity.  Half the scenes reminded me of producer Joel Silver’s explosive, slam-bang, white-knuckled, testosterone-laden tales, such as “Conspiracy Theory,” “Exit Wounds, “Swordfish,” and his “Lethal Weapon” franchise.  Indeed, Silver serves as one of the producers, and “Bullet to the Head” adheres to his formula.  Meanwhile, action auteur Walter Hill drew the other half from his hardboiled melodramas.  For the record, Hill helmed the two “48 Hrs” flicks with Nick Nolte and Eddie Murphy, “Extreme Prejudice” with Nick Nolte, “Last Man Standing” with Bruce Willis, and “Red Heat” co-starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and James Belushi.  Although “The Messenger” scenarist Alessandro Camon adapted the Alexis Nolent graphic novel "Du plomb dans la tête,” “Bullet to the Head” looks like “48 Hrs” and/or “Red Heat” clone.  Mind you, “Bullet to the Head” is Hill’s first theatrical release since his gritty 2002 prison melodrama “Undisputed” with Ving Rhames and Wesley Snipes.  During his absence from the big screen, Hill helmed the premiere episode of HBO’s “Deadwood,” and then the television mini-series western “Broken Trail” (2006) costarring Robert Duvall and Thomas Haden Church.”  In many respects, this action-packed, largely straightforward, odd couple buddy picture compares favorably with earlier, exceptional Stallone sagas like “Assassins,” “The Specialist,” and “Demolition Man.”  Most definitely, it surpasses “Tango and Cash” and “Stop, Or My Mom Will Shoot.”

Cast as a seasoned hit-man in the Crescent City, Sylvester Stallone tangles with a mysterious cabal of Big Easy investors who have the New Orleans Police Department on their payroll.  Director Walter Hill has juggled the occupations of the protagonists from his earlier buddy picture epics.  The cop was always the lead in the combo in the “48 Hrs” movies and “Red Heat.”  This time around, world-weary, career criminal James “Bobo” Bonomo (Sylvester Stallone of “Rocky”) is the lead, while saintly, Washington, D.C. Detective Taylor Kwon (Sung Kang of “Fast & Furious”) behaves rather naively and relies too much on his cell phone.  Ironically, the two men want to exact vengeance for the deaths of their former partners.  They agree to form an uneasy alliance, but Kwon’s conscience prompts him to constrain Bonomo. These two don’t immediately run into each other. When the plot unfolds, Bonomo and his partner Louis Blanchard (Jon Seda of “Bad Boys 2”) masquerade as cops to snuff a cocaine-snorting thug, Hank Greely (Holt McCallany of “Fight Club”), in a motel room.  Bonomo spots a tattooed prostitute cowering in the shower, but he lets her live.  This amoral murderer draws the line at shooting women.  When he is behind the wheel on the road, he swerves to avoid stray cats in front of him.  “It’s bad luck,” he assures Louis.  These two show up at a crowded bar where they are supposed to pick up the balance of their loot for the shooting.  Before either realizes they have been double-crossed, another assassin, Keegan (Jason Momoa of “Conan”), stabs poor Louis repeatedly to death in front of everybody.  He wields a small blade to hack both of Louis’ lungs so nobody in the noisy bar knows a murder has occurred.  Keegan isn’t quite as lucky with Bonomo.  Now, Bonomo wants payback.  Our hero crosses paths with a hard-nosed, Washington, D.C. police detective who is visiting New Orleans.  As it turns out, Hank Greely was his former partner in Washington.  Kwon wants the people who ordered Hank’s demise.  Sure, neither Bonomo nor Kwon have much use for each other initially, but they kind of grow on one other as they survive back-to-back fracases. 

Hill stages some gripping shoot-out scenes that genre fans will savor, and you get to see Silver's trademark Ka-Boom explosions!  Hill never lets the narrative bog down in aimless chatter or an over elaborate plot.  Stallone’s character provides deadpan narration throughout the pyrotechnics so you never take anything seriously in “Bullet to the Head.”  “Bullet to the Head” is not unlike a Tarantino thriller.  Camon and Hill wrap up everything, but leave room for a sequel since the hero’s daughter and the D.C. cop are dating.  At 66 years of age, Sylvester Stallone appears as fit as a fiddle.  This is the kind of movie where guys shed shirts and clash muscles.  He channels a little bit of “Rocky” in his tongue-in-cheek performance.  The ax fight between beefy, muscle-bound Jason Momoa and Stallone has been carefully edited to present both to maximum advantage.  You know Stallone is going to triumph, but Momoa doesn’t make it look easy.  Momoa makes a lusty villain.  No less villainous is Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje as a crippled, African investor has no qualms about murder.  Christian Slater appears briefly as a smarmy swindler with a flash drive around his neck that boasts the goods of everybody.  The interrogation scene is pretty amusing.  Clocking in at a lean, mean, 97 minutes, “Bullet to the Head” doesn’t wear out its welcome.  You don’t even have to wait around to see what’s after the end credits so you can clear out early.  Were it not for the pedigree talent involved, “Bullet to the Head” would qualify at best as a three-star rather than a four-star movie.  If you still like Stallone, you'll love "Bullet to the Head" because it is worth shelling out the bucks to watch this Spartan saga.

FILM REVIEW OF "THE LEGEND OF THE LONE RANGER (1981)

Scenic locales, gorgeous cinematography, superb set design, atmospheric art direction, and a first-class supporting cast cannot salvage "Monte Walsh" director William A. Fraker's lame western "The Legend of the Lone Ranger" with a impassive Klinton Spilsbury cast as the Masked Man. Spilsbury is a tall, lean gent with a strong chin and a dashing profile. In other words, he would have made a great Marlboro Man, but he conveys no sense of presence. Not only is this western an origins epic establishing the genesis of the Lone Ranger, but it is also an abduction opus since the hero must rescue President Ulysses S. Grant from the villainous Major Bartholomew 'Butch' Cavendish (Christopher Lloyd of "Back to the Future") who attacks his train. You would think President Grant would have surrounded himself with an army of soldiers as his bodyguards, but they are nowhere to be seen.

 When we get our first glimpse of the Lone Ranger, John Reid is an adolescent who saves a young Tonto from a gang of ruthless ruffians. No sooner has young Reid saved Tonto from these villains than he scrambles back to his home to find these same dastards attacking his ranch. They gun down both his mother and father in cold blood, and later his big brother packs him off to Detroit. Of course, Detroit would be the perfect place since the original "Lone Ranger" radio series aired there on WXYZ in the first place in 1933. Later, after he has grown up and graduated from law school, he visits his brother, Captain Dan Reid (John Bennett Perry of "Independence Day"),and they ride off in pursuit of the gunmen who hanged a crusading newspaper publisher (John Hart of "The Lone Ranger") in the dusty town of Del Rio, Texas. It seems that Lucas Striker has printed some unkind words about Cavendish, and he repays the favor by dispatching his hooligans to slip a noose around his neck.

The ambush at Bryant's Gap—one of the few events that distinguish this horse opera-- is staged with gusto. Cavendish's men launch wagons laden with explosives off promontories at either end of the gap and cut the Rangers off from escaping while his army of riflemen massacre them. They use a Gatling gun to mow down the poor lawmen. In this version of the legend, Cavendish is no longer an ordinary outlaw but a former U.S. Army officer court-marshaled by Grant. Cavendish plans to establish his own kingdom in Texas and intends to use Grant as his bargaining chip to realize his dream. Christopher Lloyd plays Cavendish as a tight-lipped martinet, and he does some strange things himself. When he orders the execution of two of his henchmen (Ted Gehring and Buck Taylor of TV's "Gunsmoke"), he has them blindfolded and seated in chairs before a firing squad. Believe it or not, one of Cavendish's other henchmen is portrayed by no less than Tom Laughlin of "Billy Jack" fame.

 

This 98-minute horse opera perished at the box office partially because of an ill-fated public relations campaign that stripped the original Lone Ranger--Clayton Moore--of his mask. After he finished making "The Lone Ranger and the Lost City of God," Moore appeared in various commercials with sidekick Jay Silverheels and attended movie conventions where he signed autographs. The was the primary way that the former Masked Man generated revenue for himself and his family in his later years. Something must have gone wrong in the process of making the movie because the producers used John Hart, who took over the role momentarily after a contract dispute. Particularly objectionable is the reliance upon a balladeer (country singer Merle Haggard) to provide musical narration that serves no purpose. We know everything that we need to know and then here comes Merle underlining what we already know.  

The problems with the script are numerous. A relationship between John Reed and Amy Striker has its moments when they swap spit, but it goes no farther. Instead of the outlaws killing Amy's father, they should have killed her accidentally when she got in their way. This would have ended the romance and given the Lone Ranger another reason to ride the back trails for justice. The scene where the Masked Man gallops alone into Del Rio to rescue Tonto from a hangman's noose is inferior. He faces little opposition from the townspeople. Although the finale with the Lone Ranger and Tonto infiltrating Cavendish hidden fort turns out to explosive stuff, this entire scene makes it too easy for our heroes who encounter no trouble. The screenplay includes historical figures such as Buffalo Bill Cody, Wild Bill Hickok, and General George A. Custer. Jason Robards is good as Grant, but the story is formulaic. 

If you didn't know any better, "The Legend of the Lone Ranger" might make a tolerable rainy day movie. Michael Horse plays Tonto, but the two generate little sense of camaraderie. "Your sins will be paid for in the fires of hell," proclaims Grant when he sentences Cavendish to prison. He could have been the idiots who took away Clayton Moore's mask and came up with this oater. Stacy Keach's younger brother James dubbed Klinton Spilsbury's dialogue, but not even he can cry "Hi, Yo-Silver" with any enthusiasm. I grew up watching Clayton Moore and Jay Silverheels ride across the small screen as well as the big screen in "The Lone Ranger" and "The Lone Ranger and the Lost City of Gold," and both of these outings surpass this technically elegant looking sagebrusher. The DVD release of this inferior western is just as lame because it is presented in the Pan & Scan format until the end credits roll and the images appear in widescreen letterb0xed format. 

FILM REVIEW OF ''PARKER" (2013)

The brawny Jason Statham crime thriller “Parker”(*** OUT OF ****) qualifies as uneven but entertaining.  Too many characters converge in this above-average revenge melodrama.  Hispanic diva Jennifer Lopez plays one of those extraneous characters in “Black Swan” scenarist John J. McLaughlin’s flawed screenplay.  Cast as a divorced, debt-ridden, real estate agent, Lopez never gets intimate with her rugged “Transporter” star.  Instead, she is stuck in a supporting role and lends only minimal sizzle to “Blood In, Blood Out” director Taylor Hackford’s otherwise high-octane actioneer.  In one scene, she strips to her undies for our suspicious protagonist to see if she is wearing a wire.  Meantime, our hero has somebody else, in an even smaller role, who attends to him after he’s been shot, stabbed and beaten up.  Nevertheless, when Lopez isn’t chauffeuring Statham around scenic Palm Beach, Florida, she is meddling with his carefully laid plans the same way Lucille Ball used to interfere with his Cuban band-leader husband’s nightclub show in the “I Love Lucy” television comedy.  This energetic R-rated epic follows the exploits of a tough-as-nails professional criminal named Parker who lives by a strict code of ethics that reflects his principles.  He doesn’t harm anybody who doesn’t ask for it, but robbery is still his bread and butter.  When an armed guard nearly succumbs to a heart attack, Parker calms him down while he steals from him.

Statham isn’t the first actor to incarnate Parker.  If you’re counting, “Parker” marks the sixth time Hollywood has adapted the late Donald E. Westlake’s crime novel that he penned under the pseudonym Richard Stark.  Initially, French New Wave director Jean-Luc Godard changed the sex of the role for actress Anna Karina who played Paula in “Made in USA” in 1966.  Lee Marvin took a bullet as the same character with the name Walker in director John Boorman’s violent shoot’em up saga “Point Blank” in 1967.  Jim Brown played him as McClain in director Gordon Flemyng’s account of a hardboiled hold-up in “The Split” in 1968.  Robert Duvall landed the role as Macklin in director John Flynn’s “The Outfit” in 1973.  Finally, Mel Gibson appropriated the part as Porter in director Brian Helgeland’s gritty, bullet-riddled “Payback” (1999).  If you haven’t seen these previous adaptations hardboiled melodramas, you should put them on your wish list.  

“Parker” opens with an explosive heist at the Ohio State Fair.  Parker (Jason Statham of “Safe”) supervises an elaborate heist with four partners with whom he has no history.  This quartet masquerades as either clowns or cops, while he dons the collar of a clergyman.  They plunder the concession booth and make off with hundreds of thousands of dollars.  A case of arson designed to distract the authorities so the gang can make a quiet getaway concludes with the tragic death of an innocent bystander.  No sooner has this criminal quintet fled with their ill-gotten gains than Melander (Michael Chiklis of “The Fantastic Four”) insists Parker chip in his share of the loot so they can finance a $50-million haul in Palm Beach, Florida.  Naturally, since our hero doesn’t trust his accomplices, he refuses to join them.  Melander pulls a gun on Parker, and they careen recklessly down a public highway trying to control Parker.  Parker beats them up and then bails out the window.  He slams into the asphalt and lays there stunned.  August (Micah A. Hauptman of “S.W.A.T.: Firefight”) shoots him once and disposes of his bloody corpse into a ditch.  Miraculously, Parker survives this near-death ordeal and lucks up when a family stops to help him out.  Our hero awakens in a hospital as the police are making inquiries about him.  Cleverly, he manages to elude them despite both  the trauma and his gunshot wound.  He tracks Melander and his trigger-happy goons down to sunny Palm Beach, Florida.  Parker’s escape from the hospital and his improvised methods for boosting cars and getting cash-on-the-run are fascinating stuff.  Not long after Parker arrives in Florida, he hooks up with Lesley (Jennifer Lopez of “Enough”) and uses her to find where his ex-partners are holed up in an elite population.  “Parker” loses momentum at this juncture before it recovers with a suspense confrontation between our amoral hero and the dastardly quartet of hoods.  

Despite the alluring attraction she provides, Jennifer Lopez could have been deleted entirely from "Parker."  After all, what is the point of having a looker like Lopez if she is not the hero’s romantic interest?  Meantime, Hackford and McLaughlin confine Parker’s girlfriend Claire (Emma Booth) to the periphery with little to do aside from fleeing from his assailants and nursing our hero’s wounds.  She doesn’t have enough time to make much of an impression.  Michael Chiklis, Clifton Collins Jr., Wendell Pierce, and Micah A. Hauptman are thoroughly convincingly as ruthless criminals who leave Statham for dead on a road with a bullet in him.  Unfortunately, we don’t learn much about these thugs since Hackford and McLaughlin concentrate on the plight of Lopez’ hard luck character.  Looking way past his prime as Statham’s mentor, Nick Nolte spends most of his time growling his lines of dialogue as if he were recovering from a hangover.  One of the best close quarter’s combat scenes pits Statham against Swiss actor Daniel Bernhardt, who replaced Jean-Claude Van Damme in the “Bloodsport” franchise.  For the record, Statham and Bernhardt performed their own stunts in a knock-down, drag-out, brawl.  This bruising man-to-man knife and fistfight qualifies as one of the highlights of “Parker.”  Clocking in at just shy of two hours, “Parker” could have been leaner and meaner had either Lopez’s scenes been trimmed or the two women had been merged into one.  Nevertheless, die-hard Statham fans will enjoy the white-knuckled shenanigans in this muscular melodrama. 

FILM REVIEW OF ''THE LAST STAND" (2013)

At age 65, most men are content to retire and rest on their laurels.  Former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger isn’t one to sit on his assets in his old age.  Since he can’t run for the Oval Office, Arnold is struggling to revive his career after spending about a decade off-screen.  Arnold’s pal Sylvester Stallone, who is enjoying a modest career revival himself, cast the Austrian bodybuilder in his two “Expendables” movies, and Arnold is scheduled to team up with the Italian stallion again in the forthcoming actioneer “The Tomb.”  These titles don’t augur well for his comeback, but Arnold isn’t going quietly into the night.  He has lined up several projects, including a new “Terminator” sequel, a “Twins” follow-up appropriately entitled “Triplets,” and a third sequel “The Legend of Conan.”  Meantime, Arnold is “back” as a small-town sheriff in Korean director Kim Jee-Woon’s American cinematic debut “The Last Stand” (**1/2 OUT OF ****) where he clashes with coldblooded, trigger-happy villains who are bridging the way for the head honcho of a Mexican drug cartel to cross the border back into Mexico.  Basically, “The Last Stand” qualifies as a predictable but entertaining B-movie toplining Arnold, without Sylvester Stallone lurking in the background.  Johnny Knoxville of “Jackass” fame co-stars, along with Forrest Whitaker, Harry Dean Stanton, and Jamie Alexander.  If they served draft beer and pizza at movie theaters, “The Last Stand” would probably rake in a pile of dough.  Nothing about this blood-splattered, R-rated, carnage will surprise anybody who enjoys this kind of mindless mayhem. 

FBI Special Agent John Bannister (Forrest Whitaker of “Street Kings”) is in charge of transporting convicted Mexican narcotics kingpin Gabriel Cortez (Eduardo Noriega of “Che Guevara”) to a Federal prison.  Bannister’s heavily armed convoy doesn’t even make it out of Las Vegas before Cortez’s criminal organization springs him, takes a female FBI agent, Sarah Torrance (Jamie Alexander of “Thor”), hostage, and furnishes him with a souped-up Corvette that can outrun a helicopter.  Nothing Bannister does to alert the authorities along Cortez’s escape route halts the drug lord.  Cortez careens along the highway like a maniac and threatens to kill Torrance who is riding alongside him.  Truckloads of armed mercenaries blast through the road blocks and riddle everybody in sight.  Bannister scrambles every resource that he can to stop Cortez at the border after they lose track of him.  Eventually, Bannister warns the sheriff of the tiny town of Sommerton Junction, Ray Owens (Arnold Schwarzenegger), to get out of the Cortez’s way.  A former LAPD narcotics agent who quit the force after he survived a deadly massacre, Owens took a job as top cop in his sleepy little border town.  He has three officers under him who have never seen the kind of violence he has witnessed.  When Cortez’s henchman, Burrell (Peter Stormare of “Fargo”), starts blasting away at them after they discover the make-shift bridge he has erected across a gorge, Owens recruits a former Iraq veteran Frank Martinez (Rodrigo Santoro of “300”), locked up in one of his own jail cells, and a nitwit arms dealer, Lewis Dinkum (Johnny Knoxville of “Walking Tall”) to beef up his force.

Arnold Schwarzenegger looks nothing like he did in his prime.  Haggard as Clint Eastwood was in “Gran Torino,” Schwarzenegger does everything he can to make world weary Ray Owens appear vulnerable.  He takes an awful beating at the hands of the considerably younger Cortez during a tenacious stand-off scene at the border.  Of course, Arnold comes out on top but not without a lot of blood, sweat and tears.  Nevertheless, despite a shortage of snappy one-liners, he is still Arnold.  As big, dumb, action thrillers go, “The Last Stand” boasts stalwart villains, exploding body parts, and enough gunfire to keep you watching it.  Korean helmer Kim Jee-Woon doesn’t have a lot to work with in “Ghost Team One” scenarist Andrew Knauer’s hackneyed screenplay.  If you have seen “The Good, the Bad and Weird,” you know Jee-Woon is a lively action director who deserves better.  Undoubtedly, the prospect of directing Arnold and staging some hellacious high-octane action scenes attracted him to this tame actioneer.  Since he has nothing but clichés to juggle, Jee-Woon substitutes supercharged velocity for surprises, and “The Last Stand” never runs out of momentum.  Were it not for Schwarzenegger’s iconic presence, this 107-minute melodrama would be a straight-to-video saga with little to distinguish it.  The plot has more holes than some of the patrol cars that the villains riddle with their fully automatic firearms.  The Corvette that our villain steals for his joyride gets the kind of gas mileage that nobody in the real world could ever get.  Mind you, “The Last Stand” isn’t as good as lesser Arnold epics such as “Eraser,” “End of Days,” and “Raw Deal,” but it is fun to see Schwarzenegger back on the big screen where he belongs.

A FILM REVIEW OF ''GANGSTER SQUAD" (2013)

Most movies give you a chance to get comfortable with their narratives before they hit you with the hard stuff.  “Zombieland” director Rueben Fleischer’s profane, bullet-riddled, urban crime thriller “Gangster Squad” (*** OUT OF ****) cherishes no such illusions.  Early into the action, the arch villain of Angel City—real-life hoodlum legend Mickey Cohen—threads chains around the rear bumpers of two automobiles with an angry out-of-town mobster entangled in a hammock of chains between the cars.  Native Americans saved this ghastly fate for only the most repugnant whites in old movie westerns, except with horses rather than cars.  After a brief conversation, Cohen orders the cars to careen off in different directions.  An aerial long shot depicts the poor dastard as his body bursts apart in the middle.  Indeed, “Gangster Squad” isn’t for everybody.  This suspenseful, often violent, but thoroughly melodramatic law and order epic recounts how an undercover unit of Los Angeles cops fought fire with fire in their war on crime.  They destroyed Cohen’s dreams of turning California into his own private criminal empire.  Movies like “Gangster Squad” used to be the bread and butter for Warner Brothers.  The landmark Burbank studio produced the earliest and most controversial gangster thrillers in the 1930s with the three most memorable stars: James Cagney, Edward G. Robinson, and Humphrey Bogart.

Los Angeles Police Chief Bill Parker (a beefy Nick Nolte of “48 HRS”) summons World War II veteran, Sergeant John O’Mara (Josh Brolin of “Jonah Hex”), because he needs somebody fearless enough to tackle a special assignment.  Lately, Jewish crime figure Mickey Cohen (Sean Penn of “Bad Boys”) has been creating chaos in the City of Angels.  Not only does he own a respected judge, but he has also been cheating on his mobster cronies both in Chicago as well as Los Angeles.  The Chicago mob isn’t happy with Mickey’s behavior.  The King of the Sunset Strip refuses to bow and scrape to the Windy City hoodlums.  He has nothing but contempt for local crime boss Jack Dragna (Jon Polito of “The Big Lebowski”) and orders hits on his life.  At one point, a shoeshine kid dies in an attempt on Dragna’s life.  Cohen has established himself as a warlord, and he refuses to share and share alike with the mob.  Incidentally, for the sake of armchair movie historians, “Gangster Squad” takes place after the demise of Benjamin Siegel, a.k.a. “Bugsy” (1991) with Warren Beatty as the notorious gangster who forged Las Vegas into the gambling capital of America.  At one time, Mickey Cohen worked for Siegel as a henchman.  Two bullets to the head scrapped Siegel’s criminal career in 1947.  “Gangster Squad” opens in 1949 during the rising tensions of the Cold War between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R.  

Essentially, Chief Parker asks O’Mara to assemble a unit to harass Cohen.  "Don't make arrests," Parker grumbles. "This is occupied territory. Wage guerrilla warfare." O’Mara forms a rainbow-colored “A-Team” consisting of African-American Officer Coleman Harris (Anthony Mackie of “Real Steel”), older white cop, Officer Max Kennard (Robert Patrick of “Terminator 2: Judgment Day”), his Hispanic partner, Officer Navidad Ramirez (Michael Peña of “End of Watch”), Officer Conway Keeler (Giovanni Ribisi of “Ted”), and eventually Sergeant Jerry Wooters (Ryan Gosling of “Drive”).  One of the first things that they do is plant a bug in Cohen’s house so they can monitor him.  Methodically, these guys shoot up Cohen’s bars, casinos, and disrupt his narcotics traffic.  Wooters takes an interest in Cohen’s girlfriend, Grace Faraday (Emma Stone of “Easy A”), who is supposed to be teaching Mickey etiquette.  True events "inspired" “Gangster Squad,” and this means that Hollywood has taken dramatic license with history.  Actually, the movie is based loosely on Paul Lieberman’s book.  As far as I know, our tall, rugged hero didn’t go toe-to-toe with the considerably shorter Cohen in a public place and beat him to a bloody pulp.  Of course, movies have to be both heroic and confrontational, and "Gangster Squad" possesses both of these attributes. 

This obstreperous, 110-minute, R-rated, shoot’em up doesn’t flinch when it comes to episodes of violence.  Despite the recent bloodbaths both in movie theaters and elementary schools, this standard-issue, old school Warner Brothers release embraces wholesale violence with relish.  Fleischer features fashionable thugs armed with machine guns strafing anybody in sight, including poor white shoeshine boys.  Fleischer stages the action with considerable finesse, and he relies on a charismatic cast to deliver a synthesis of “The Untouchables” with Kevin Costner and “L.A. Confidential” with Russell Crowe.  Despite a plethora of action, largely frontal assault firefights on gritty city streets with .45 caliber Thompson submachine guns, “Gangster Squad” suffers from halfheartedly etched characters, a contrived screenplay by former LAPD homicide investigator and novelist Will Beall, and a numbing sense of predictability.  You can guess what is going to happen before it does, but everybody looks good doing it.  Nevertheless, genre fans should appreciate the studious lengths that the filmmakers have taken to recreate Los Angeles in the late 1940s.  Some of the action was lensed on genuine L.A. locations and enhances the authenticity of the action. Flinty-eyed Josh Brolin makes a sturdy hero, while Ryan Gosling channels Humphrey Bogart.  Sadly, Emma Stone lingerfs on the periphery as the love interest who eventually figures in the demise of Sean Penn’s Mickey Cohen. Penn chews the scenery as Cohen.  No doubt he watched both "Scarface" and "The Untouchables." Altogether, “Gangster Squad” qualifies as a good actioneer, with good performances, and good cinematography.