Ace in the Hole

Gangster Squad wasn't a spectacular movie by any stretch of the imagination. I walked into the cinema knowing that it had lukewarm reviews, but I was expecting something of a decent action romp nonetheless. I will leave more professional reviewers to sum up exactly why it was so ordinary. But what I was particularly annoyed by was the absence of a key element - the Ace in the Hole.

Gangster Squad -  missing something

Basic rule of watching most adventure/action movies - we want the good guy to win. Basic rule of making most adventure/action movies - make the good guy win. Puritanical cynicism then asks the question 'why do we watch these movies if we know that the good guy is going to win?' What hooks us into forking out to pay to go into a cinema and invest 2-3 hours of our time if we already know the ending?

This, though, is a question as old as literary criticism. And the answer is therefore nearly as old - we want to experience the journey. We invest time into a-run-of-the-mill, happy-ending story because we want to see what leads up to that foregone conclusion. But what a lot of story tellers seem to be overlooking these days is the Ace in the Hole - the 'thing' that allows the good guy to beat the bad guy at the climax.

Allow me to elaborate. Ignoring a multitude of very good and very intelligent exceptions, action/adventure films follow a fairly vanilla three act structure. In Act One, we meet the characters and get introduced to the whole situation. In Act Two we are off on our journey and all manner of shenanigans ensue. These shenanigans are often little character building adventures, the execution of different parts of a plan or a training montage. But most importantly, Act Two contains the confrontation and the low point, where our hero fails in a confidence shattering manner. It's from these depths that our guy then rises and launches into Act Three - the climax and resolution, where the bad guy gets beaten to a pulp.

Three act structure - source

The good films do one of two things with this formula. They either play with the formula itself, sending the audience on an unexpected ride (cf. The Dark Knight, Skyfall), or use the conventions in a particularly effective manner. And as a broad generalisation, this requires a confrontation that has the audience sinking further and further into their seats, a low point that makes you genuinely believe that the hero cannot come back, and then a climax and resolution that has us gripping our seats then whooping for joy.

But the key to that entire emotional process is the payoff - the Ace in the Hole. In order to rise from the low point, we expect the protagonists to unlock something vital, be it a weapon (like the sword Anduril from The Return of the King) or emotional acceptance (like The Matrix, Hot Fuzz and countless other examples). This something is then used as the hero's ace in the hole in the final confrontation.

Neo's acceptance of what must be done gives him the power to defeat the Agents

The novelty of the Ace in the Hole should not be taken so lightly. It shows progression in the hero's character and lets us share in a feeling of self satisfaction at the end (when the Ace is waved in the face of the antagonist as he's being defeated). In The Matrix, Neo's acceptance of his own destiny was vital in proving to Agent Smith (and to the audience) that there's no such thing as 'only human'. In Hot Fuzz (albeit in a somewhat satirical manner) Sergeant Angel's decision to dispense with his inhibitions and let loose with the action movie cliches surprises the entire village. The existence of the Ace makes our inner voice go 'yeah, now he's gonna get it'. It's a particularly satisfying feeling, and a payoff after the emotional turmoil in the Act Two confrontation.

What about Gangster Squad? I'm not going to spoil anything particular here by saying that after a violent gun fight, the Big Bad - Mickey Cohen - gets beaten and thrown in jail at the end. My beef is that the protagonist John O'Mara didn't learn anything - and I mean at all. All that happened was something went wrong, then he just says 'screw it, I'll go after Mickey Cohen like I would have even if everything hadn't gone wrong'. The movie was going quite well from a stylistic point of view, if a somewhat simplistic and unbelievable storyline. But there was nothing to hang onto emotionally during the climax of the film. And that ruined an otherwise average movie experience for me.

Gangster Squad - All races represented, but still missing something

To the director's and screenwriters' credits, there are some plot hooks here and there. But they come in awkwardly and don't provide the sufficient emotional payoff at the end.

Next time you watch a film, watch out for the three acts. It makes for some interesting comparison of film.