GANGSTER SQUAD EXPLAINS HOW THE MOB WAS THWARTED IN LA
A nostalgia film for Angelenos, Gangster Squad (directed by Ruben Fleischer) is about the efforts of Mickey Cohen (played by Sean Penn) to control Los Angeles and the unorthodox countermeasures by a high-ranking police officer, William Parker (played by Nick Nolte). The year is 1949. Cohen is the mob boss, who took over after the mysterious assassination of Bugsy Siegel two years earlier. Many police and judges are in the pay of Cohen, who controls drugs, gambling, the sex trade, and is being wired up for the pipeline to racetrack results, which will be such a cash bonanza for Cohen that he will own not just LA but the entire West Coast. Parker presumably has tried Elliot Ness methods to deal with Cohen, but in vain. Now he realizes that the only way to stop the Cohen juggernaut is war – to hire a special squad of police to destroy Cohen’s places of business. Then the Hollywood distortion of reality begins. He approaches John O’Mara (played by Josh Brolin), who joined LAPD after being discharged from the army at the end of World War II and has not forgotten methods of warfare. O’Mara, in turns rounds up a gang of six, stumbles his way in the first caper, but gets smart, thanks to an operation to bug Cohen. Much of the film, thus, involves assaults by the undercover police. O’Mara’s voiceover says that Parker headed LAPD until his death in 1966. Based on the book by Paul Lieberman, the film features police being more violent than Cohen. The film romanticizes the Gangster Squad, which existed before 1949, but fails to report that Cohen was ultimately convicted of tax evasion, sent to Alcatraz, transferred to the federal prison in Atlanta after being assaulted in Alcatraz, released in 1972, and died of cancer in 1976. As for the nostalgia, drawings accompanying credits do more than the sets to remind LA residents of the day when red streetcars and the Hollywoodland sign were still landmarks, as the “land” part of the sign was gone by the end of 1949, and the streetcar tracks were ripped up in the 1960s. MH