10 PERFECT Casting Choices Wasted On Terrible Movies

Gangster Squad came out in 2013 and follows a secret group within the LAPD who band together to take down ruthless mobster Mickey Cohen. It's got violence and a stellar cast, but it's also got no clue what it's trying to be.

Here's a brief run-down of the cast: Josh Brolin, Ryan Gosling, Giovanni Ribisi, Anthony Mackie, Robert Patrick, Michael Pena, Emma Stone, Nick Nolte, Jon Polito, Mireille Enos and Sean Penn. Now, with a cast like that and a plot promising some sort of epic Untouchables-like scenario, thick with drama, action and a great plot, you'd expect the film to be amazing.

But it's not. Stumbling through a story which offers no real intensity or drive, Gangster Squad is irredeemably sloppy and a complete disaster, tripped up by its need to be a serious, Oscar-baiting crime drama. The characterisations are thin, the motivation is never really there, and director Rueben Fleischer tries to make the whole thing stylish and striking, but ends up making every set piece and action sequence look unbelievably dull.

Despite these massive, inescapable flaws, the cast all do a pretty good job with the material they're given. Gosling and Stone's romantic sub-plot is probably the film's high point, and Brolin, Ribisi, Patrick, Pena, Mackie and Nolte all bring their A-game to some seriously under-written characters.

Gangster Squad should have been great, but ends up sounding just as juvenile as its title suggests.