I’m going to come right out and say that this week’s movie, 2013’s Gangster Squad, is a steaming pile of cinematic crap. The movie never finds the right tone – it doesn’t know if it wants to be L.A. Confidential, Sin City, or Dick Tracy – and Sean Penn’s performance in it calls into question his continued interest in acting.
Gangster Squad is additionally infamous for needing a late reshoot due to a scene that too closely resembled in action and timing the Colorado theater shooting. That was after parts of that scene had appeared in the trailer. Can’t really blame the film makers for that, however.
That all being said, the movie does have awesome costume design and a ton of cool cars throughout, including my father-in-law’s 1950 Jaguar XK120 (see it here) that does duty as Emma Stone’s character’s ride. Two stories about that after the jump and then we’ll get to the trailer.
Emma Stone was scripted in one scene to drive away out of frame in the Jag, but she was also required to wear crazy mobster-moll high heels. I can say from experience with the car that one cannot drive it in high heels. The production had Stone – lovely girl, my daughter says – get into the car, pretend to start it and put it in gear, while three burly teamsters pulled on the front bumpers, dragging the car out of the shot.
The other story happened during production at the Beverly Hills house that was doing duty as the home of Sean Penn’s Mickey Cohen. The car wrangler who had secured the Jag among other era cars had a friend who was fixated on Sean Penn. She somehow thought it a good idea to drive straight through from Phoenix Arizona to the shooting site, get onto the working set, and confront Penn while he was heading to do a scene, telling him that she wanted to work for him.
Penn blew up and pandemonium ensured. The woman and the wrangler were thrown off the set and my Father in Law and daughter – both there to baby sit the car and watch the shoot – were yelled at and instructed to leave as well. My Father in Law said “sure no problem, let me just get my car that’s central to this scene – and which you’re still going to pay me for – and we’ll be one our way.” Realizing he had nothing to do with the kerfuffle, and the spot they were putting themselves in, the film makers calmed down a bit.
Check out some of the cool old iron in this trailer – sorry no action shots of the Jag – as well as Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone who are two beautiful people.
[youtube]https://youtu.be/qilrVR0miPU[/youtube]
I’m not going to tell you where to watch this movie, it’s just that awful.
Image: YouTube