Sean Penn Embarrasses Himself in Over-Acted Gangster Squad
The movie is called Gangster Squad but it’s so inept that I kept thinking of Police Squad! — the 1980s spoof TV show that gave us the stone-faced detective Frank Drebin and led to the Naked Gun movies.
Gangster Squad stars a top cast — Ryan Gosling and Josh Brolin as cops trying to break up a criminal racket, Emma Stone as Gosling’s girl, and Sean Penn as vicious gangster and ex-boxer Mickey Cohen. All of them are terrible, but special mention must be made of Penn’s performance as the lethal Cohen, who rules the underworld and owns the police in 1949 Los Angeles. Penn, who for reasons I couldn’t fathom plays the part under a fake nose and a prosthetic brow that make him look like Herman Munster, does a piece of cartoonish overacting, all snarls and shouts, that would have embarrassed the cast of the 1960s Batman.
Moreover, the action of Gangster Squad is so ludicrous that you half expect “Ker-BLAM!” and “BIFF!” to pop up in quotation balloons on the screen. Brolin plays Sgt. John O’Mara, a tough-as-nails cop who accepts an assignment from his grizzled boss (Nick Nolte) to make war on Cohen’s crime outfit. The Sarge isn’t expected to make arrests, though: Cohen has so many cops on his payroll that that would be a waste of time. Sarge’s brief is to spend the movie destroying Cohen’s property and generally terrifying his minions until the final showdown.
Sounds like the director is going for Tarantino-lite. Sorry, I’ll stick with “L.A. Confidential.”
From The Untouchables to the Unwatchables. Which of these characters was the baby in the pram?
When is Penn moving to Caracas to finish out Chavez’s new term?
I wouldn’t watch any movie with Sean Penn in it . . . not even if it were a good movie. I am done with supporting leftist buffoons.
I wouldn’t cross the street to urinate on Sean Penn if he were on fire, much less pay to see any movie with him in it.
Sean Penn as a gangster…hahahahahah
I know, huh? He’s an angry little pissant, but hardly intimidating or “bad.”
Yet another reason I do not like most actors. They actually come to somehow believe they are what they portray.
i would be more afraid of Don Knotts then sean penn
Haven’t seen it but I’m concerned reviewers are wildly not on the same page when it comes to films lately. There has always been divergence of opinion but why are people lauding the crashing bore of a Bond film called “Skyfall?”
The first 40 min. was so dull and senseless I stopped and watched “The Ipcress File” instead, an actually clever screenplay with actually clever cinematography. I don’t watch Bond films to see bitchy, old, overrated actresses. And the lazy cinematography of “Skyfall” is Oscar nominated?
And then there were the complaints “Zero Dark Thirty” was confusing. In what world was that film confusing? We should agree on a language before we start speaking it.
Sean Penn embarasses himself by breathing.
Just the ‘trailer’ to this was LOL funny.
Sean Penn in this movie looks like Al Pacino did in the movie “Dick Tracy” years ago. But that movie was a spoof on comic strips, which this movie I assume tries to avoid (and fails miserably in doing so). It’s a shame, because the subject matter really is interesting, as movies like “L.A. Confidential” proved so well. All you needed was a good director, a good cast, a good film editor, a decent plot, and a great script. Hmmmm, seems like this movie is missing all of that. Oh well, at least it’s nice to see Nick Nolte acting again. He must have finished drying out in rehab.
Hugo Milk…
I haven’t watched a Sean Penn movie since Fast Times at Ridgemont High, and that was only to see Phoebe Cates half naked!! hehehe!
Didn’t Sean Penn show up after Katrina in a boat wearing a white bullet proof vest a Handgun on his hip and after sailing away while the media watched to save New Orleans realize his crew had forgotten to put the drain plug back in where upon he and his posse began to frantically bail the boat out with solo cups?
No life jackets, no floatation devices but hell, Sean did bring his gun and vest.
I thought so.
Sean Penn is what falls out when you mash a whoopi goldberg up with a bill maher.
Jeff Spicoli meets Frank Drebin.
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Why is it I look at trailers for this and can’t for a minute believe any of these guys/gals to be 40′s cops, gangsters and molls? It’s so transparently a bunch of people playing dress-up that it can’t possibly work as anything other than a comedy. The only reason I can come up with to explain why everyone seems so phony is that everyone involved is utterly lacking in historical vision. Instead of just portraying a bunch of Americans who were a whole lot like us in every way, the filmmakers approach the period with this overstated irony as if life in the 40’s was like a Noh play or something.
Well said — my thoughts exactly.
Penn is so insistantly unaware that he could not possibly be embarrassed by any role that he takes on, on-screen or off.
There are a number of so-called A-listers who fall into the same deadly trap. It is not necessary to name them; they do not exist.
But is it possible for this low information buffoon ever to be embarrassed about anything?
You know you’re watching a great actor when you forget that they’re acting.
Sean Penn never let’s you forget that he’s an actor mouthing words in front of a camera.
AWFUL.