Los Angeles has a problem with organized crime? Nothing that Ryan Gosling with a shotgun and a little Jay-Z on the soundtrack won't fix.
It was a little discouraging when Warner Bros. pulled "Gangster Squad" from its original October release date, but the fact that a trailer for the film has now been released gives us hope that the studio will find (and stick with) a slot for its period crime drama sometime this year after all.
Nick Nolte continues to sound like he's going to keel over at any second as the now almost absurdly gravel-voiced actor claims that "L.A. is a damsel in distress," mainly because it's gotten the attention of an East Coast mobster by the name of Mickey Cohen (Sean Penn, who looks to be pulling out all the stops from behind all those prosthetics). The solution to this little problem? Gather a bunch of hardass cops and have them make the City of Angels a nice place to live again — by any means necessary (and mostly off-the-record).
Why does WB seem unsure of what to do with this film? It looks like it's got style to spare (courtesy of "Zombieland" director Ruben Fleischer), the budget to convincingly pull off recreating 1940s L.A. and a killer cast (including Josh Brolin and Gosling's "Crazy, Stupid, Love" pal, Emma Stone). Get this thing on the big screen already!
Check out the trailer below or watch it in HD at iTunes Movie Trailers. "Gangster Squad" will hopefully hit theaters sometime in 2012.