Any R-rated blockbuster that isn’t based on either an existing or well-known property always runs the risk of bombing at the box office – and some do anyway as Birds of Prey and The Suicide Squad can attest – but the concept and cast assembled for Gangster Squad painted the picture of a surefire success.
A big budget, highly-stylized, and semi-fictionalized account of a crime war running rampant on the streets of Los Angeles was nothing if not an enticing concept, while screenwriters Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick had proven themselves more than capable of crafting commercially successful and adult-skewing blockbusters through Zombieland and Deadpool.
Then, when you throw a ridiculously stacked cast into the mix that featured Josh Brolin, Ryan Gosling, Sean Penn, Nick Nolte, Emma Stone, Anthony Mackie, Giovanni Ribisi, Michael Peña, Robert Patrick, Mireille Enos, and Frank Grillo to name but a small few, Gangster Squad looked nailed-on to become a solid performer at the very least.
Of course, nobody really took into account what would happen if the end product was interminably dull, which was a huge oversight. Dismissed with apathetic reviews from critics and a casual shrug from paying customers, director Ruben Fleischer’s excessively violent crime thriller could only muster $105 million in ticket sales, leaving it as a major missed opportunity.
Eye-catching shoot ’em ups are a lot more bulletproof on-demand than their protagonists tend to be, though, with HBO Max subscribers currently running and gunning alongside Gangster Squad, with FlixPatrol outing it as one of the top-viewed titles on the streaming service’s worldwide watch-list.
