Style over substance

is a bit of a mixed bag. You think it’s going to be stuffed to the brim with stolen cash, then discover some of it is actually counterfeit, though there is delight to be found at the occasional diamond rolling round at the bottom.

Set in post-Word War II Los Angeles, a bunch of cops join forces to bring down the city’s chief gangster, Mickey Cohen (a prostheticised Sean Penn, ruthlessly cruel despite looking rather like someone out of Dick Tracy). Jaded by years on the battlefield, the renegade officers shrug off the restrictions of their badges and use all force necessary to fight this latest incarnation of evil. Meanwhile, Cohen uses brute force to extract confessions from hapless henchmen (no holds are barred in the opening scene’s depiction of someone being drawn and not-quite-quartered).

The all-star cast includes heartthrob du jour Ryan Gosling, playing a much lighter version of his Drive thug with a nonchalant gait and the nerve to seduce Cohen’s girlfriend Grace (Emma Stone, cute as a button but too young to be convincing as a worldweary moll). Gosling’s morallyflexible cop is one of a motley crew conscripted by Josh Brolin’s honourable sergeant-with-fists-ofsteel to help defend the city. Actually, it’s Brolin’s pregnant wife, played by The Killing’s Mireille Enos, who determines who he’ll cast in his band of bad-asses. She needs her man home safely since they are ‘‘expecting company’’. As cliched a setup as that is, Brolin and Enos have an easy chemistry and provide most of the film’s rare moments of quality.

Director Ruben Fleischer made Zombieland, a brilliant pastiche of zombie horror movies that provided hilarity and gross-outs in equal measure. His penchant for stylistic flourishes is somewhat tempered in this 1940s period piece, but the odd slo-mo