Gangster Squad

Though it already sealed the deal for us by amassing one of the more impressive tough-guy (and tough-girl) ensembles in recent memory, here's the trailer for Ruben Fleischer's Gangster Squad as more or less a formality. Here the Zombieland director turns his stylized eye toward the 1940s battle between the LAPD and mobster Mickey Cohen—and in particular, the stoic smirk-off between Ryan Gosling and Sean Penn, as they compete to see who can be the most coolly confident about their capacity for violence. Josh Brolin and Emma Stone also get in on the aloofness as Gosling's partner and the moll he has his sleepy eye on, respectively, while Fleischer matches everyone's laid-back air with lots of things being tossed out in slow-motion—bullets, guns, punches, burning stacks of money, meaningful looks, Nick Nolte, etc. It all adds up to a swaggering stew of L.A. Confidential, The Untouchables, Mulholland Falls, and even the video game L.A. Noire that culminates in a bunch of machine-gunning mobsters blasting their way through a movie screen to a Jay-Z soundtrack, in case it still hasn't got your attention yet.