This noirish mob actioner from Ruben Fleischer (
Zombieland) originally included a scene of gangsters firing from behind a silver screen into a movie audience; after the multiplex massacre in Aurora, Colorado, that scene was deleted, so you'll have to settle for the opening one, in which a hood with his limbs tied to two different cars is torn in half onscreen. Apart from the gore—and there's plenty—this is basically
L.A. Confidential without the script: an upright police detective in 1949 (Josh Brolin) rounds up some like-minded renegades on the force (Ryan Gosling, Giovanni Ribisi, Michael Peña, Anthony Mackie, Robert Patrick) to wage war on real-life gangster Mickey Cohen (Sean Penn). Fleischer and screenwriter Will Beall adapted a nonfiction book by Paul Lieberman, turning it into a cartoon. With Emma Stone and Nick Nolte.
By
J.R. Jones