I walked into the theatre expecting to be pleasantly charmed by Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling. I wasn’t.

The most distinct features of the movie “Gangster Squad” are its highly stylized action scenes, its star-studded cast and its abundance of burgundy ties and wide-brimmed fedoras.

But these traits are more often than not indications that the movie will be disappointing, and “Gangster Squad” is no exception.
Although the film contained amazing costume and set design and excellent acting from its cast of gifted actors and clever dialogue, it replaced the necessary character development with empty gore and cookie-cutter bad versus good clichés.
The premise of the movie is a ragtag group of cops that put their badges away and work together to fight against the manic Mickey Cohen (Sean Penn), the mobster who runs all of Los Angeles.
Cohen’s crimes don’t sit well with Sgt. John O’Mara (Josh Brolin), a stereotypical cop who shoots first and asks questions later. O’Mara is asked by the chief of police to form a covert group of cops to shut down Cohen’s operations using the shadiest forms of vigilante justice. So O’Mara recruits the smooth-talking but cynical detective Jerry Wooters (Ryan Gosling) as well as other cops that won’t be bought out by the Los Angeles mob.
As with many other films with an ensemble of different characters, “Gangster Squad” fails to develop most of the characters and it instead conforms to the conventional crime drama characterizations.

Although the characters are given clever one-liners, they do not make a significant impact. The deaths of some of these characters fail to even garner an emotional response from the audience.

Despite the film’s subpar plot development and dialogue, both Gosling and Brolin manage to maintain the excellent standard of acting that they are known for.
Wooters, fulfilling the stereotypical playboy role, seduces Cohen’s etiquette tutor and occasional lover, Grace Faraday (Emma Stone), who subsequently fulfills her stereotypical role of the beautiful woman that teeters on the edge of good and evil.
Her role in the movie is out-of-place and forgettable. Stone and Gosling lack the chemistry that they had in “Crazy, Stupid, Love.” Their relationship fails to develop over the course of the movie, leaving the audience with a one-dimensional resemblance of what it could’ve been.
The film also consists of a series of exaggerated shoot-outs, car chases and explosions that leave the good guys unscathed and the bad guys lying dead on the ground. Like many of director Ruben Fleischer’s other films (“30 Minutes or Less”, “Zombieland”), the focus of the film is on quality of style instead of quality of substance.
Overall, the film lacks inspiration and depth, and despite the actors’ attempts to compensate for the lackluster material, the movie remains an enjoyable watch but a forgettable one as well. I rate “Gangster Squad” 2 out of 4 stars.