Overrated

Nice effects though.

This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

This movie is a jumbled mess. I thought of what went wrong in the film and how it could've been fixed, but in reality, this film should not have been made. This is the very definition of genre fatigue. Before you consider watching this film, I suggest to you reading the filmographies of the director and the writer. The director's films average around 3.5/10. Don't say you weren't warned.Spoilers:The mistakes are plenty - anachronisms, the dialects/language is off, the lighting is abysmal, i.e. daytime TV quality, the story is essentially bad, the acting is bad in two ways - unnatural movement (dying, shooting a gun, falling, etc. reminds me of teenage films on Youtube) and poor line delivery (the breaks between... phrases should be somewhere else), I could go on, but should I? The film also tries to do many things at once and fails at everything. What was the point of the boxing? It then advocates a pro-gov, but anti-big business agenda for the prohibition, but then shows the government, or in this case, the cops, as corrupt and racist, with the mafias as the good guys who just want to serve the working man a cold brew at the end of a hard day of work. The cops use slurs more often than real racists, in a kick-the-dog trope, to establish that they are the bad guys in this film. I'm not sure how the film justifies it though - bootleggers/moonshiners/smugglers are innocent people subverting the system, drinkers are innocent, the gov is free of guilt (it's the Rockefellers that pushed the state to prohibition, according to this film), but the cops, who are part alcohol-consumers, part of the bootleg industry and part of the blameless state are given 100% of the blame.I don't know who this message is for, if the film draws a (imaginary) parallel of gas-vs-ethanol with modern day fossil fuel vs renewables, but there's also a bit of feminism sprinkled in, which is not actually a flaw, but adds to the jumbled mess this film is. The issues are brushed upon and not explored, and the film itself is done in a noir manner, making the issues seem out of place in what is a cheesy revenge flick. I don't know who could survive 3 seconds of two automatic machine-guns firing at him from close range, but our friend the boxer here can, although he was a "still a bit sore" after.This movie appears to be made by someone who is a fan of gangsters, but whose point of reference is gangster movies. It is a cover of a cover of real life.

I'm a sucker for a gangster film. I grew up in the days when classic films played on TV all the time on UHF channels. My film education included watching those movies made by James Cagney, Edward G. Robinson and Humphrey Bogart when they played the toughest gangsters to be found. I also have felt that THE GODFATHER is perhaps the best movie ever made. So gangster films are a genre I enjoy.GANGSTER LAND takes a look at the Capone mob in Chicago as seen through the eyes of "Machine Gun" Jack McGurn (Sean Farris). McGurn's real name was Vincenzo Antonio Gibaldi, but as he explains in the film boxing promoters were more inclined to book Irish fighters than Italian. As the film opens up that is McGurn's dream, to become a professional boxer. He's good and could actually make it. But when mobsters kill his father in front of his store, McGurn sets off on a path of revenge.Taking up with a young Al Capone (Milo Gibson), the second man under Johnny Torrio (Al Sapienza), McGurn slowly develops into an asset used to enforce the rules of the street for the gang. His abilities come in handy because this is just as a war among the Chicago mobs of Torrio and George "Bugs" Moran (Peter Facinelli) are coming to a head.Mobsters are dying everywhere, shot in the streets of Chicago to the consternation of the honest police seen here as Detective Reed (Jason Patrick) and Detective Boyle (Sean Kanan) while corrupt officials continue to take payoffs in return for a blind eye to the issues at hand. This blind eye is what eventually leads to the FBI sending in Elliott Ness and his crew to take down Capone.Jack moves up the ladder of success in the mob and picks up a steady girlfriend in the process named Lulu (Jamie Lynn-Sigler). Lulu has dreams of fame and uses her contact with Jack to help achieve that but it's not near what she wanted and while she loves Jack there is a bit of fear mixed in as well.Eventually the infamous St. Valentine's Day Massacre makes its way into the story, mainly because many felt that McGurn was the man responsible for planning the deadly attack. Its ramifications on the mob wars in Chicago would be lead to peace for a while and eventual payback. It remains one of the most brutal killings of all time. It will also lead to the inevitable finale of the film.While GANGSTER LAND wants to become a major player in the world of mob films the odds are against it. To begin with there are so many great films in the genre that it will never be an easy task to achieve such a lofty goal. But here we have more than one issue going against it. To begin with the film seems too pristine, too clean in both the costuming and set design. Everything is too new and doesn't have that sense of realism in it that would have made it more believable.The story seems fine but the dialogue seems stiff at times and feels more like a parody of classic gangster films than an addition to that catalog of greats. Even the actors at times felt like they were wondering if the lines they were saying fit or not. This is not to say the acting here is sub part. As a matter of fact all involved do their best to bring life to this somewhat lifeless story.Farris has the tough job of making us feel sympathy for McGurn while at the same time making him menacing. He falls short of the menacing portion here offering a scowling bad guy as opposed to one who feels deadly. Gibson, son of actor Mel Gibson, does a solid job here but isn't given more to do that make proclamations of anger or act as a consoling confidant of McGurn. Sigler, whose ties to the cable series THE SOPRANOS would seem to make her a perfect fit shows that her acting skills are not the greatest and odds are parts in lesser known films will be her career from here on.All of this being said it might seem as if I'm piling on negative comments on the film which isn't quite the case. Taken on its own the film does offer an evening's worth of entertainment for crime fans or fans of the genre. But when the bar is set so high with the films that came before this one, reaching that bar is not an easy task. It might not reach that bar but at least it makes an attempt to do so.

Gangster Land is a small budget action thriller chronicling the rise and fall of Al Capone and his right hand man "Machine-gun" Jack McGurn (born Vicenzo Gibaldi). The movie is however done in very broad strokes and offers very few factual details and frequently depicts events inaccurately. The acting is relatively fine with the main roles being played by Milo Gibson (Capone) and Sean Faris (McGurn). Jason Patrick, Jamie-Lynn Sigler, Peter Facinelli and others act well in their supporting roles. Obviously the movie was done on a tight budget so there are no massive special effects to speak of. The problem with the film lies in the fact that it feels very very rushed and very little is explained. There is the usual look at bootlegging, speakeasies, Thompson Machine Guns and the main character who falls in with the wrong crowd after trying to be honest. So it has all been seen before. The events depicted however are not true as the reality was quite different regarding Jack McGurn. There is also no real mention of the numerous gangs and mobsters involved in the 1920s and 1930s prohibition era gang wars. The ones that are mentioned however are not given any depth due to the length of the movie or lack of. Overall this movie is not the worse way to spend 85 minutes but it could have been much better had attention been paid to accuracy and character development. A tentative 6/10.

Unless you already know the main characters making up the various Chicago mobs of the 1920's and 30's you will most likely not understand this movie. It is mostly a collection of well-known incidents (the St. Valentines Day Massacre for example) and extreme violence along with standard "mobster meets dance joint showgirl" interludes.Because the entire story of the Chicago mobs are not explored in greater detail and the actors don't look much like their real life counterparts it is often difficult to follow the action when one gang is attempting to waylay the other(s). Even the 1950's TV program "The Untouchables" offered a lead-in before each episode that explained a bit about the history. This movie just begins cold.I gave the movie a 3 for the photography, sets and costumes but the storytelling leaves a lot to be desired. Anyone who knows the actual history of gangs in Chicago will wonder why they made this movie.