“Gangster Squad” Is A Classic Mob Movie A’la “The Untouchables” (VIDEO)

The new movie "Gangster Squad" is drenched in blood, violence, mayhem and shoot 'em ups.

I loved it!

The flick is certainly not for the squeamish (it begins with a man being pulled apart ...in half...by two cars) but the violence is so over the top that it becomes cartoonish and should not keep lovers of "cops and robbers" dramas away.

Sean Penn plays a creepy Mickey Cohen, a real life mobster who tried to become the "King of Los Angeles" following the end of World War II.  He owns almost everything and everybody in the city.  Josh Brolin plays Sgt. O'Mara, an L.A. cop who is assigned to assemble a small group to fight Cohen on the mobster's own terms.  Others in the cast are matinee idolish Ryan Gosling, a dewy doe-eyed Emma Stone and and almost unrecognizable Nick Nolte.

The real star of this movie is the set designer Mahar Ahmad.  His uncanny, believable recreation of late 1940s Los Angeles is near breathtaking.  The swanky nightclubs, the big old Plymouths and Chryslers, the Art Deco storefronts, the mansions of Beverly Hills and a spot on 1940s Chinatown all help draw you in to this sublimely attractive film.

Is it a legendary movie?  Not by a long shot.  You will never hear the titles "Gangster Squad" and "The Godfather" in the same sentence (except right there) but it is definitely worth two hours of your time.  If you can get by the gore and blazing sub-machine guns, those of us who loved Robert Stack in "The Untouchables" will be a prime audience for "Gangster Squad."

I give this movie three meatballs out of four.

Here is a special treat.  Watch for the excellent character actor Jon Poilto in an important, yet brief role, as Mickey Cohen's rival Jack Dragna.  Recognize Polito?  Well, maybe not his face, although he has been in more than one-hundred movies.

But how about his gravelly voice?

For all you longtime WDOS listeners  you will recognize Jon Polito as the exasperated voice in the New York State Lottery commercials hollering "Hey, You never know!"