An elite police squad fights to save the city of Los Angeles from a power-hungry East Coast mobster in this gritty police-detective film set in the 1940s based on Paul Lieberman’s seven-part Los Angeles Times series “Tales From the Gangster Squad.”

Jewish gangster Mickey Cohen is a Brooklyn-born boxer-turned-L.A. kingpin whose brutal ambition has earned him the respect of the Italian mob. He’s the kind of crime boss who dines with judges and police chiefs, but still isn’t quite sure which fork to use when it is time for the main course. Just when it begins to look like Cohen owns every cop in the city, however, LAPD Chief Parker enlists honest cop Sgt. John O’Mara to assemble a top-secret task force that will burn the vicious gangster’s thriving criminal empire to the ground. The squad strike fast and hard at the core of Cohen’s operation, but they are unexpectedly compromised, putting the lives of all of their families in danger and leaving them with little choice but to step up their efforts and target the ruthless gangster directly. Cohen isn’t going down without a fight, and if he falls, the entire city will feel the aftershock. Director: Ruben Fleischer. Cast: Sean Penn, Ryan Gosling, Josh Brolin, Emma Stone, Anthony Mackie. Rated: R. Time: 1:50.