As soon as the movie starts you find out just how ruthless Mickey Cohen, portrayed by the brilliant acting of Sean Pean, is when you see he has a man chained by his legs and arms to two separate vehicles that gruesomely rip the man a part by driving in opposite directions. And as if that wasn’t bad enough, Mickey lets his dogs loose to eat the now separated man. Then we jump to Detective John O’Mara, played excellently by Josh Brolin. O’Mara is on the heels of a scumbag pimp who’s tricking women into following him into a prostitution ring by saying he’s in the film business and thinks they’d do great if they tried out for an audition. O’Mara is on to this and is the only cop brave enough to go against the Cohen Organization and step into their territory. We see just how gritty O’Mara can get, no punches held and he’s not afraid to fight dirty if he has to taking out multiple goons on his way to saving the girl.

Everyone knows you don’t mess with Mickey Cohen though. He’s got the judicial system in his pocket along with plenty of cops which leads to his men being set free minutes after they arrive at the police station. This of course attracts the attention of the Chief of Police, played by Nick Nolte. The Chief recruits O’Mara to form a squad that will destroy the Cohen organization except there’s a catch. The squad will be completely off the books, no names, no badges, no mercy. The Chief doesn’t want Cohen killed, but he wants to send a message that the city of L.A. will not tolerate organized crime.

O’Mara is a married man who has a pregnant wife at home, Connie, portrayed by Mireille Enos. While I’ve never heard of the actress, she did a great job being the concerned, yet supporting wife of a cop. Connie plays a big part in helping the formation of the gangster squad guiding her husband with which men he should enlist for the task.

The first recruit is Sgt. Jerry Wooters played by Ryan Gosling. A fast talking ladies man, who doesn’t mind crossing the line to get what he wants. A great example being Grace Faraday, Mickey Cohen’s lady, played by the lovely Emma Stone. Wooters proves to be very valuable to the squad and becomes O’Mara’s right hand. Then we have Officer Coleman Harris played by Anthony Mackie, another cop who isn’t afraid to get dirty. He’s a bit of a knife specialist, and I wish they would have showed off this skill a bit more. Next there is Officer Conway Keeler, played by Giovanni Ribisi. He’s another family man who joins the squad because he wants to see a brighter future for his son when he grows up. Keeler is like the “Murdock” of the group, he’s one of those super genius types who’s great with gadgets and can put together anything. Then finally we have Officer Max Kennard, portrayed by Robert Patrick. He’s basically the quickest gun in the West. And Kennard’s partner, Officer Navidad Ramirez, played by Michael Peña.

Together they form the Gangster Squad that albeit in the beginning they have no idea what they are doing. It’s a pretty laughable endeavor, but they soon figure it out. Mickey Cohen, played by Sean Pean is completely ruthless as mentioned earlier. He has a case of the Scarface syndrome and won’t stop until the West Coast is his even cutting his ties with the Mafia Families in Chicago and threatening to go after them if they wage war. The bosses lady, Grace Faraday does very well as a supporting actress. Had the movie been longer, she probably could have played a more meaningful role to the film.

Ruben Fleischer’s had a great vision when directing this film. He draws from a lot of other great action films and ties them all into one. John Woo’s slow motion bullet time. Tarantino’s shock value, and that classic mobster/gangster feeling that Martin Scorsese does so well in his films. There were a whole lot of cool cinematic scenes to go “oooh” and “ahhh” over during the film. The writing was top-notch by Will Beall as well. While I’m not familiar with the writer, he did a great job portraying the events of this movie that were based on a True Story.

This movie isn’t for the light-hearted however. While it’s not quite as gory as a Quentin Tarantino film, there is a whole lot of murder and blood everywhere. Rather then showing you the violence, they do a great job of painting you a mental image (Think the chainsaw scene from Scarface). They do some messed up stuff, pouring acid on a man, ripping a man in half with a car, using an electric drill on a mans skull… Again, the picture is painted without actually giving you the graphic visual, but you definitely get the sense that yeah, that just happened. However, other than the strong violent content and cussing, the movie was pretty clean. No real lewd conversation takes place, there’s a very brief cabaret scene where a girl is wearing tassels, but no nudity is shown the entire movie.

This will easily be one of the best action films of 2013, and guaranteed to land some awards. I give it 5/5 Stars. Go see it!

Hey guys.  Ya’ll may remember this piece from awhile back. Some practice from me, learning how to color and ink in Adobe Illustrator CS4 instead of using Photoshop. The reasoning behind this is because everything done in AI is vector art which is great for print. Hope you guys like it, let me know whatcha think! I took the clouds out, didn’t think they fit very well with this. May add a background later.

Angelina Jolie did an excellent job portraying the character. She’s always been an pretty good actress, and we knew she could do action/adventure stuff from her run as the Tomb Raider. But this was REALLY well done. Salt was basically the female version of Jack Bauer from 24 as far as action goes mixed with Jason Bourne. Yeah, it was that good. When 24 the movie comes out, I can only hope they set the standard as high as this movie did.

Liev Schreiber was also in this film as Salt’s CIA boss, “Ted Winter.” Some of you may know him from film’s such as Defiance, Sabertooth from Wolverine Origins, and The Manchurian Candidate. Me and my sister still like to call him “Cotton” though for his role in Scream haha. It also starred Chiwetel Ejiofor of Red Belt, American Gangster. And an nice appearance from Gaius Charles a.k.a. “The Smash Baby!” (Friday Night Light Fans/Travis you know what I’m talkin’ about haha.)

There is an lot of mayhem in this movie, and amazingly they managed to keep it clean. There was very subtle cussing and it lived up to it’s PG-13 rating without making it feel like an kids show. And they managed to pull off the action in an very 24-ish/Bourne Identity kind of way along with lots of parkour scenes. Those who have seen Liam Neeson’s Taken can get an idea of how the action went in this film. It does have it’s dark moments at times and goes for some shock value. There were a few scenes in the film where people in the theater gasped at what was happening on screen. I think that’s a good thing though, it preserves the realism effect.

The movie really takes you on an ride as you follow the story of Salt and the whole time you’re trying to figure out is she really an terrorist or was she framed? I’d give this film 5 out of 5 stars and would definitely go see it again.

If any of you guys watch the show “Chuck” you know Chuck is an spy who has what they call an intersect inside of his brain which makes him basically the smartest guy in the world. He knows basically everything almost, especially if it’s government or CIA related. If you’ve watched every season, you find out Chuck’s actually dying from having this said intersect in his head and his father makes him this watch which injects this drug into his veins to keep him from dying from all the knowledge he’s obtaining. Well that’s basically what this movie is, Limitless is Chuck via an pill minus the spy/CIA/government stuff.

Anyways, the film stars Bradley Cooper, Robert DeNiro, and Abbie Cornish (Some chick who looks just like Charlize Theron). Coop plays this character named “Eddie”. Eddie’s this writer with an book deal, but has writer block. He comes off as an bum in the beginning of the movie, has potential, but instead wastes everyday doing nothing productive. Until one day he runs into his ex-brother in law, who gives him this pill called NZT. Of course it’s on the “up and up”, FDA approved and hitting the streets as an behind the counter drug next year… Of course we’re not gonna believe the shady brother-in-law in the cheap suit though.

Anyways, Eddie keeps taking these pills and he’s getting smarter and smarter by the day. Learning multiple languages, doubling his money in no time. You get the idea. Problem is, just like when Chuck loses access to the intersect if Eddie doesn’t take the pill he starts reverting to his old self and suddenly all the knowledge he’s gained overnight is gone. Other things happen when he quits the pills cold turkey as well, he gets black-outs, can’t remember what he did for 18+ hours. His life is just rapidly going by and he’s no idea what the heck just happened when he snaps out of it. He’s not “addicted” to the pills by any means, and he has an plan to get off them. He just has to stay alive and out of jail long enough to do so.

I don’t wanna ruin the movie so I’m not going to say much more, but it’s an excellent film. It never gets boring, at least not in my opinion. There’s some really good action in it as you can guess some people will be trying to kill him. The acting and directing was fantastic. Great story, especially how it ends. I’d say check it out.

It is PG-13, but if you’ve never watched “Chuck”, have no idea what an “intersect” is, I can see how some may think it’s some sort of “drug” movie. But really it’s not. It’s more about using your full potential and knowing that with great power comes great responsibility. Yeah, I just quoted Uncle Ben from Spider-Man ; ). Here’s the trailer: