In 1949 Los Angeles, gangster Mickey Cohen (Penn) is launching a Chicago-style takeover of the city. So the police chief (Nolte) asks detective John (Brolin) to form a special squad to operate off the books and stop Cohen for good, whatever it takes. With help from his reluctant, pregnant wife (Enos), John selects his team: technical whiz Conway (Ribisi), gunslinger Max (Patrick), hot-shot Coleman (Mackie) and keen rookie Navidad (Pena), as well as pretty-boy Jerry (Gosling), who is brazenly conducting a fling with Cohen's moll Grace (Stone). Things get messy very quickly.

Fleischer gives the film a comic book style, with flashy performances and production design that makes everything shiny and new. Costumes look unworn, hair unruffled, cars pristine and the architecture mythical. It's colourful and seductive, mostly using real L.A. locations instead of digital trickery. Meanwhile, the script conflates real events into a simple cop narrative that punches the usual plot points on its way to a showdown shoot-out with a fistfight coda.

In other words, there isn't a moment that feels realistic. Silly comedy gives way to super-violent nastiness, while everyone flirts shamelessly without any hint of actual sexuality. Most of this is rather entertaining, especially with actors like Penn chomping mercilessly on the scenery. Gosling is always watchable, in a preening, over-pretty sort of way, and his scenes with Stone have a zing of chemistry. And Brolin holds his team together with stone-jawed perseverance.

Oddly, it's his wife who emerges as the most rounded character, and Enos gives her the rational feistiness that's missing from these bulldog-faced men who still think they're fighting the Nazis. This is just one theme that's continually referenced but never grappled with, along with police corruption, renegade capitalism and the use of illegal methods to to the right thing. If only the filmmakers had spent as much time making the film meaningful as they did making it energetic. But it vanishes in a flash of colour. And the real story is still more interesting.

themes, language, strong violence

8.Jan.13