Gangster Squad (Ruben Fleischer, 2013)

The proudly infantile title of the film already helpfully serves notice of its mission, i.e. that baddies will be mown down with no airy-fairy pandering to due process or interference from tedious legal scenes or moralising, which seem to have been obvious flaws in its precursor The Untouchables, along with its lack of bullet-time interludes. Abandon all hope of subtlety or historicity, ye who enter here.
Hollywood's retreads of the golden era of cops vs. mobsters have fewer pretensions of originality with each new visit: the team of heroes is composed of the unflaggingly virtuous leader, the ladies' man, the sharp-shooter, the brainy little one, the loyal Hispanic and the black knife-thrower, with the sole female characters the supportive wife who wants her husband to give up and stay alive, and the gangster's moll who converts. Expectations cannot be high but Gangster Squad nevertheless manages to confound what little there are by going beyond the call of duty in ransacking noirs for dialogue and scenes to even start stealing shots from outside the gangster genre, from the likes of Sunset Boulevard. This crosses the line and is the point at which any credit the makers have accrued by slaving over fresh gumshoe quips must run out.
On a side note, Josh Brolin, who plays the lead looking like Dick Tracy drawn with an etch-a-sketch and with about as much emotional range, will soon be seen in Spike Lee's systematic rape of the classic Oldboy. Please revoke his Screen Actors Guild card now, before any more harm is done.

4/10