"Gangster Legend": Cartoonized "Bold and Ambitious"

Aisha 2021-11-12 08:01:16

As a loyal fan of old-school police films and Los Angeles noir films, "Gangster Legend", which has both characteristics, has kept my appetite for a long time, but its luck is too bad. It is the biggest "Dark Knight Rise" shooting. The victim, passive modification killed its last bit of explosive power, and the sudden "castration" erased perhaps its only vigor, making it a flashy Hollywood assembly line work. However, it caused it. There may be more than these reasons for being well-behaved. Since the beginning of the new century, with the advancement of the times, the "nostalgic" crime movies related to the two once dangerous and fascinating eras of the United States in the last century (the Prohibition period in the 1920s and the peak of judicial corruption in the 1950s) are still in production. The quality of these films has dropped sharply, but the quality has been significantly improved. The styles of these films collectively align with the noir and gangster films that were popular in the 1940s and 50s. In terms of chronology, they have also returned to the "moonlight is more than During the "Dark Night Movies" period of "Daylight", Alan Coulter's "Hollywood Manor" and Brian De Palma's "Black Dahlia" were good to Billy Wilder and Raymond Chandler and other standard bearers of Los Angeles film noir A tribute to the land, and Michaelman’s "Public Enemy" and Sam Mendes’s "Road to Destruction" resemble howard Hawkes and Melvin Leroy and other old-school gangster film predecessors. Gangster movie, but in this "Gangster Legend", although it still has the characteristics of many genres or genres of the above-mentioned era, it is like a dark night metropolis with feasting and crisis-ridden, marginalized characters who advocate violence, gray and anxious film moods and Attitudes and so on, but after watching the first trailer, my feelings about it are more confined to a classic of the 80s—Brian De Palma’s "Bright and Ambition", and You can simply use a remake to describe this feeling, because the two of them are really alike, but compared to "Golden Ambition", "Gangster Legend" appears more lively and young, or even more unreal. After watching the feature film, This feeling remains the same.
Regardless of the filming period and the story, "Gangster Legend" happened 30 years after "Bright and Ambitious", but this did not prevent the two from finding obvious similarities. The first is the story. Both are the stories of the rise of gangs and the large-scale metropolis where judicial justice cannot be done. A small number of volunteers who have faith in the law and their responsibilities joined forces to fight violence outside the system. , It’s just that "Bold and Ambition" will take place in Chicago, where the smuggling of liquor is popular, and "Gangster Legend" is selected in another major crime town-the more magnificent and noisy Los Angeles. Compared with the super fantasy lineup of Kevin Costner, Sean Connery, Andy Garcia, and Charles Martin Smith in "Bold and Ambition" to beat Robert De Niro, the aura of the righteous side in "Gangster Legend" seems a bit weak , Josh Brolin and Ryan Gosling are obviously the pillars of this group. Unfortunately, both of them have a single personality. Brolin's family and the dangerous love between Gosling and Emma Stone could have been two sub-lines. Very good and rich characters, the results are not developed much, or the development is too vulgar, the characters are too facial is a great problem of "Gangster Legend", the other members of the group are also the same, so that when some of them sacrificed It didn't arouse many emotional outbursts in the audience, and there was no pain and shock that came from the death of Sean Connery in "Ambition". The villain has invited Sean Penn, who can challenge De Niro this time. Unfortunately, the role of Mickey, the gangster, is too similar to the role played by De Niro in "Bear and Ambition". He is sinister, arrogant, sensitive, Worshiping violence, even the movie behavior and some key lines are extremely similar. After their vitality was severely injured, Mickey and Kabang, who became angry and furious, were furious "I want them to die! I want their whole family to die!" Maybe Mickey. The only characteristic of this character that is a little bit more personal than Kabong is that he is brutal and lustful, and he was a bit worse than Kabong before he was jailed at the end-he was slapped by Brolin. The similarity of the characters is also obvious in the positive angle. Brolin obviously corresponds to Costner, Gosling corresponds to Connery, Rubisi corresponds to Smith, and the remaining three team members correspond to Garcia, and the character fate is almost the same. , Except Gosling was alive, Connelly died. Finally, there is the similarity of the plot. The hotel shootout at the end of "Gangster Legend" is very similar to the classic railway station rush in "Fighting and Ambition". There are many other similar passages, so I won't say more here. .
In fact, apart from the movie-watching fatigue caused by the unintentional or intentional similarity between "Legend of Gangster" and "Yi Courageous Heart", what has caused the film to drop a step further is the overly cartoonish style. The director Ruben Frescher, who once filmed the thriller comedy "Zombie Land", abandoned the repressive and gloomy atmosphere of traditional Los Angeles crime movies when dealing with this film, instead using a relaxed and bright narrative rhythm and brilliance. The bright visual emotions packaged "Gangster Legend", and the result gave me the feeling that a tough and thick "Courageous Ambition" has been transformed into a crime cartoon farce like "Dick Tracy". Perhaps for an authentic Hollywood popcorn commercial movie, such a treatment is obviously more popular with the audience, but as a "Gangster Legend" with a serious soul and background, this way of expression inevitably makes people feel a little bit The lack of self-respect and frivolity, especially the last fight between Brolin and Sean Penn, was the most prominent point, which seemed very unrealistic and redundant. Perhaps, as a movie that has been ordered to be revised and postponed due to social events, "Gangster Legend" seems to have been destined to fail to achieve the final expected results, plus the original lack of highlights and novelty of the script and the judgment of the main creators Mistakes and distractions, even if countless bullets were shot out in anger, countless cars were blown up, countless gangsters were killed, countless packets of plasma were spilled, after all, there were only gangsters, no legends, and both external and internal reasons were defeated. this movie.

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Extended Reading

Gangster Squad quotes

  • Officer Conway Keeler: Son, your dad's a genius.

    Keeler's Son: [nods yes]

    Officer Conway Keeler: Go tell your mom that.

  • Jack Whalen: You expecting some trouble, Mickey? You lookin' for some?

    Mickey Cohen: My dog, Mickey Junior... he shits more trouble than you're gonna give me.