Every since the Cold War ended we've struggled to replace Russians as the token bad guys, and amid all the replacements that have cropped up, the strangest one has to be the LAPD. It seems like half the cop movies that come out in a given yeaer focus on corruption within the police department, from period noirs like L.A. Confidential to something like Training Day. Warner Bros. is heading into production on one of the latest LAPD stories, but it seems to have two key differences: it's a true story, and things might not be as black-and-white as they seem.
Paul Lieberman's series of articles in the L.A. Times, "Tales From The Gangster Squad," will be turned into a feature, with Dan Lin producing. Variety says the movie will focus on a period in the mid-1940s when the Los Angeles police took it upon themselves to make sure the East Coast Mafia didn't make inroads in their city. As Variety puts it, "The squad's anything goes approach lasted through the 1950s."
All kinds of people were interviewed for the article, from ten surviving members of the police's gangster squad to lawyers for famous bad guys Bugsy Siegel and Mickey Cohen. The whole story sounds fascinating, and yeah, cops-and-robbers stories can be overdone, but this one is true! With a good director on board and some reliable actors, this could be the LAPD story that actually makes them seem interesting again (no, Changeling, you did not fit the bill).
