“Gangster Squad”

The new Gangster Squad — a cops vs. mobsters tale set in 1940s Los Angeles — was meant to have debuted last September, but then tragedy scuttled its release. I’m talking, of course, about the massacre in Aurora, Colorado, where a lone gunman opened fire in a packed movie theatre, killing 12 people and injuring 58 others. As fate would have it, the finale of Gangster Squad featured a strikingly similar scene: mobster Mickey Cohen (Sean Penn) and a bunch of tommy-gun-toting henchmen opening fire in a crowded movie theatre from behind the movie screen. Anxious about appearing insensitive, Warner Brothers immediately postponed the film and set about re-shooting the ending.

The result: a film that once would have been merely terrible is now also flagrantly hypocritical. Warner Brothers’ solution was not to tone down the violence, but simply to set it somewhere else. Instead of happening in a movie theatre, the blood-spattered shoot-out now happens in China Town. Crisis averted!

I’m not a fan of moviemakers censoring themselves simply to avoid the wrath of the p.c. brigade, but Warner Brothers chose to respond, and the shallowness of its response is telling. Gangster Squad is an absurdly violent movie — there’s barely a scene in it that doesn’t involve somebody being eagerly shot, maimed, or beaten — and it’s all rendered in a slick, almost obscenely weightless manner. We’re not shocked or troubled by any of the violence, and there isn’t even any brutal poetry in it (as there arguably is in, say, Django Unchained). It’s just endless and numbing — an attempt to distract us from the rampant emptiness of the story and characters. The idea that a change in locale somehow lets the film off the hook is a bad joke.

In any case, Gangster Squad is a staggering waste of time and money. (Somewhere around $70-million was spent on it.) Director Ruben Fleischer (Zombieland, 30 Minutes or Less) seems to think he’s following in the footsteps of The Untouchables and L.A. Confidential (both are repeatedly cribbed from), but he’s much closer to the likes of Mobsters or the Michael Jackson “Smooth Criminal” video. The all-star cast — Penn, Josh Brolin, Ryan Gosling, Emma Stone, Giovanni Ribisi, Anthony Mackie, etc. — merely play at being cops and robbers; it’s as if they’re in a Vanity Fair spread rather than a movie. The script, by newcomer Will Beall, provides plenty of goofy period phrases like “scram,” “ducky,” and “who’s the tomato?” but it doesn’t bother itself with theme or characterization. Brolin’s closing narration — a belated rumination on all the nothing we’ve just seen — is awesome in its brainlessness. It’s like one of those what-did-we-learn-today moments that used to cap saturday morning cartoons.

All I could think about watching Gangster Squad was why such a talented, in-demand cast would deign to be in it. Were they simply unable to resist the lure of fedoras, tailored suits, and Zippo lighters? Perhaps. But the biggest incentive, I’m guessing, is that the movie has no clear lead, allowing responsibility to be shared around, dispersed. (Penn, Brolin, and Gosling are the nominal leads, but they trade screen time like they’re playing a game of hot potato.) Essentially, Gangster Squad is a macho version of those star-packed chick-flicks like Valentine’s Day and He’s Just Not That Into You. It’s the latest trend: Spread-the-Blame Cinema.

“Les Misérables”

Before I belatedly comment on Les Misérables, a deeply shameful admission: I was once a fan. Yes, ’twas in my sheltered schoolboy years, when European mega musicals — Les Miz, Phantom of the Opera, Miss Saigon — were all the rage and not-yet-out gay dorks like myself could take refuge in kitsch while imagining it high culture. Not only did I know all the words to all the songs in Les Miz, I owned both the Broadway and London cast recordings. How I wasn’t beat up every day I’ll never know.

A good two decades have passed, and I can honestly say I haven’t thought much about Les Miz in that time. So when I sat down to watch the new movie version, I expected a flood of weird, conflicting emotions: nostalgia and embarrassment, affection and disdain. Instead, I felt something else entirely: boredom at the grinding banality of it all. Les Misérables doesn’t rise even to the level of kitsch — it’s too lumbering, dour, and self-serious. With the exception of a few cheesy power-pop ballads, the songs are all dirge-like choral numbers, drippy romantic duets, or tuneless, glorified recitative. And those lyrics! Those primer-level rhymes! (“Tell me quickly what’s the story / Who saw what and why and where / Let him give a full description / Let him answer to Javert!”) What was my teenage self thinking?!

Since I’m late to reviewing the movie, I won’t repeat the most oft-stated criticisms: that Tom Hooper directs like a staggering drunk; that live singing would’ve been better used on a movie with real singers; that Russell Crowe glistens with flop-sweat. Instead, I’d just like to call out the bit that’s been getting a free pass from everyone: Anne Hathaway’s performance as the pitiable factory-worker-turned-prostitute-turned-consumptive Fantine. Unlike many of the other cast members, Hathaway is totally competent and utterly in control of her effects, but it’s like she’s competing in an Oscars iron-man. She has no small feelings — it’s all crying and croaking and keening. 

The role is, admittedly, an inescapably hackneyed one, like something out of the campiest, most maudlin Dietrich-Von Sternberg collaborations. But with Hooper simply planting the camera on Hathaway and letting her run with it, we get overacting at its finest and most unfiltered. By the time she’s on her deathbed, bald and dementing and cough-singing, you’re ready to give her the Oscar just to shut her the hell up.

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