Nick Nolte Joins the Cast of GANGSTER SQUAD
Ruben Fleischer's new film Gangster Squad has got a hell of a great cast, and today it's been announced that Nick Nolte is the latest actor to join the production. So far the rest of the cast includes Sean Penn, Ryan Gosling, Josh Brolin, Anthony Mackie, Giovanni Ribisi, Holt McCallany, Robert Patrickand Emma Stone.
According to Deadline, "Nolte will play Bill Parker, the new chief of police in Los Angeles, and the first in a awhile who hasn’t been corrupted by Mickey Cohen (Sean Penn). The chief, a Purple Heart recipient at Normandy, is the one who starts the Gangster Squad, a crack team designed to bring down organized crime."
I love this true story that the movie is based on, it's got a great director and an amazing cast. There's no doubt in my mind that this movie is going to turn out to be incredible. I can't wait to see it!
As we previously reported, the movie will be based on a series of articles in The Los Angeles Times written by Paul Liebermanback in 2008. The articles examine an LAPD unit that's set up in the 1940s to fend off the growing influence of the East Coast Mafia in the city. The police group ended up becoming very powerful, and the battles with the Mafia escalated, leading to mayhem and betrayals. The LAPD unit was a secret "off the record" police task force who went after Meyer Harris "Mickey" Cohen, a high-profile gangster who was a member of the "Jewish Mafia".
Cohen started out as hired muscle for Al Capone in Chicago, but blossomed as a mogul after being sent to Los Angeles by Murder, Inc. kingpin Meyer Lansky to surveille Bugsy Siegel, who Cohen helped set up the Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas and ran it's sports betting operation. He also ran a panoply of L.A. businesses, presumably as fronts to launder money — including floral shops, paint stores, nightclubs, casinos, gas stations, a haberdashery, and an ice cream parlor — before getting busted for tax evasion in 1950 and serving four years in federal prison.
You should read the series of articles over at the LA Times.