Gangster Squad is an upcoming movie inspired by factual events about a special team created by the L.A.P.D. to take on the L.A. organized crime scene. Sounds like the basic premise for most of the crime shows on television, no? Well, what sets this movie apart has been its casting of some heavy hitters and today we’re learning that they’re continuing that trend of vying for our attention by adding Nick Nolte’s name to the credits.
Source: Geek Tyrant
According to Deadline, “Nolte will play Bill Parker, the new chief of police in Los Angeles, and the first in a awhile who hasn’t been corrupted by Mickey Cohen (Sean Penn). The chief, a Purple Heart recipient at Normandy, is the one who starts the Gangster Squad, a crack team designed to bring down organized crime.”
…the movie will be based on a series of articles in The Los Angeles Times written by Paul Lieberman back in 2008. The articles examine an LAPD unit that’s set up in the 1940s to fend off the growing influence of the East Coast Mafia in the city. The police group ended up becoming very powerful, and the battles with the Mafia escalated, leading to mayhem and betrayals. The LAPD unit was a secret “off the record” police task force who went after Meyer Harris “Mickey” Cohen, a high-profile gangster who was a member of the “Jewish Mafia”.
Cohen started out as hired muscle for Al Capone in Chicago, but blossomed as a mogul after being sent to Los Angeles by Murder, Inc. kingpin Meyer Lansky to surveille Bugsy Siegel, who Cohen helped set up the Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas and ran it’s sports betting operation. He also ran a panoply of L.A. businesses, presumably as fronts to launder money — including floral shops, paint stores, nightclubs, casinos, gas stations, a haberdashery, and an ice cream parlor — before getting busted for tax evasion in 1950 and serving four years in federal prison.
It’s been quite a while since I last enjoyed Nolte in a role with some “meat” to it and I have to admit that this may be an awesome opportunity for him. You can still read the actual L.A. Times articles here. So far they’ve assembled a pretty interesting cast including Sean Penn, Ryan Gosling, Josh Brolin, Anthony Mackie, Giovanni Ribisi, Holt McCallany, Robert Patrick and Emma Stone and will be directed by Ruben Fleischer (Zombieland) so this one has a substantial opportunity to reach fairly high on my radar. Only thing left is for them to actually begin filming and sharing the goods.
