Now Showing: Gangster Squad ***

Stars: Sean Penn, Ryan Gosling, Emma Stone
Director: Ruben Fleischer
Rated: R
Showing: Speciality Cinema. Fri-Sat 2.30pm, 6pm, 9pm; Sun 4.35pm, 7pm; Mon-Thurs 6.30pm 9pm.
Runtime: 113 minutes
Action, crime, drama.

The Old West died hard in the City of Angels. And in the years after World War II, battle-hardened veterans came home to a town “under enemy occupation,” when the only way to fight off the Mob was with a six gun, your two fists and the right hat.

Gangster Squad is a gang-war drama built on Western conventions, a rootin’ tootin’, Camel-smokin’, whiskey swillin’ shoot-’em-up about a lawless period in L.A.’s history when a small cadre of cops, working outside the law, took on Mob boss Mickey Cohen in a fight for “the soul of Los Angeles”.

Josh Brolin ably handles the John Wayne role, the paragon of virtue, an incorruptible police sergeant tasked by the only honest police chief (Nick Nolte) to chase out mob boss Mickey Cohen (Sean Penn, pugnacious, ferocious).

Ryan Gosling is Jerry Waters, the cynical detective/ gunslinger who will have to take sides, but is going to take some convincing. All in all, Gangster Squad is a solid piece of work, and that solid piece of work Brolin anchors it in the kind of square-jawed moral rectitude that makes you wish Hollywood made more REAL Westerns, just for him.